Come Back
by Dukes126plus
Summary: You waited twelve years. And if that ain't enough, you waited one more week, to get around to it. From the reunion movies. Warnings: slash, incest, and the path to a happy ending was long and twisted.
1. Come Back

The Reunion Movies. I did write vignettes for them, but much like the movies didn't fit with the rest of the series, these vignettes are not as fun or filled with promise as the others have been.

It's a struggle to reconcile the boys going off to separate lives with the behavior they exhibited in the series. They were clearly close and did just about everything together. And as much as probation theoretically held them together and stuck them in Hazzard, clearly they could get out whenever they wanted to. If they wanted to be somewhere else or away from each other, they would have figured out a way to do it. So them going in different directions like that almost feels like they ran away from each other.

This first one is from _Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion!_ and is pretty safe to read. The second one, in chapter two, never really resolves itself. And it's as sad as the reunion movies felt to me, kind of like putting a nail into the coffin of what used to be plain old fun. There's hope for the boys, but it's now a long and hard road instead of the fun one they used to ride down until a normal car could go no more, then jump over whatever obstacle was at the end.

**EDIT:** I went back some months later and followed this story line out. **Warning,** this is** slash**, its **incest**, it gets **graphic**. Read it only if all of those things are okay with you.

* * *

Come Back

It was hard to believe looking at the house now, all yellow trimmed with white, clean and snug on the property that was more lawn than a farmyard now, how only ten years ago, they'd had nothing. Everything was smaller – somehow Hazzard had cramped up into plots instead of farms – and tidier, with only the smell of ripening gooseberries and the weakening old arms of their uncle to make it home. The place was as common and vanilla as any housing development he'd seen in the towns ringing Atlanta, looked boring but far more prosperous than it had been ten years ago.

Or twelve, more like it. At least he knew for sure that their probation had ended that long ago. Why the whole town waited to spruce up until him and Luke were actually free to leave, he couldn't say. He knew the farm'd been fixed up thanks to the money they'd been sending home ever since they went off and got themselves paying jobs. Now they had everything they could want, their own space, exciting careers, and security for their uncle in his old age, living here in the cottage that was once a farmhouse.

Back then they had nothing, poor as church mice, Rosco used to so helpfully remind them. Ain't making two hundred dollars in a year, as old Ace Parker had once informed them. They'd had nothing, not even hope for the future. Just time stretching out in front of them like it was endless, wide open countryside with the occasional crisscrossing dirt road. Just that, and each other.

What was it Luke said the last time some lady tried to take over the county and tear it up for her own purposes? Something about how the years they spent in this house with Jesse bringing them up were likely to be the best of their lives.

Old Luke over there was doing a fine imitation of a man who would never have said such a thing. Half amused, half annoyed and highly put-upon to be in Hazzard at all. Everything was absurd to him; then again it always had been. The difference now was that Bo could see it, too – Hazzard was doing the same laps it ever had, not getting any faster or better at them. Prettier, but no smarter.

"Luke," and it was incongruous, not to mention impossible, be he had to ask anyway. "Do you really got to go?" Tomorrow, which had seemed like a long time ago back when Luke got off that ridiculous fire engine on Sunday.

"Don't you?" was all the answer he got, nothing useful about it. Just the last drops of beer swirling around in a tin can, waiting to get sipped down; Luke was making up his mind to drink them, or waiting for Bo to finish his, first. "Jesse don't need us here no more," was the afterthought of an answer, can tipped, fizz trickling down Luke's throat to the rhythm of that same bobbing adam's apple he's watched since Luke turned fourteen. It's about the only indicator of Luke's emotions, a rise and fall of that one little lump in lieu of the words, _I think we're in trouble, Bo_.

"Jesse don't need us here no more," Bo agreed. In fact, the new balance of all of their lives relied on Bo and Luke earning salaries and sending them home so Jesse wouldn't have to farm anymore, and Daisy could afford graduate school.

It's better for everyone, might have been Luke's next words. The kind of thing that made the same sort of sense that Luke always did. Sitting on the new picnic table, shoulder-to-shoulder with Luke and looking at the house the two of them built without ever lifting a hammer, Bo saw things clearly for the first time in his life. Luke wasn't always right.

"One last drive, then," Bo suggested, dumping the last few drops of swill into his mouth, crumpling the can and leaving it on the table. "Come on, for the General." For Luke and the General, because now that he was out of retirement, Bo wasn't giving the car up.

There was that unimpressed smirk, that half-somewhere-else look Luke had been giving him all week. A lifetime of that look and now Bo took it into his head to mind, because tomorrow Luke would be gone. It was one thing when Luke was only halfway present forever and quite another when that half would be gone in the morning.

Interesting how they had to learn all over again how to get into the car. Bo had the advantage, what with Luke worrying over tin cans and trash, so his cousin was barely seated on the door when Bo hit the accelerator. Funny how he tried to make it look normal when he landed all crooked, led by that cocked left shoulder. But Luke was already someplace else in his head, so whatever bruises the rough start might have left on his skin didn't hurt anyway.

He likely didn't feel those bumps as Bo leapfrogged cross-country, either, but the General did. _Take it easy on the jumps_, Cooter's voice kept nagging in his ear. So he did, took it real easy until him and Luke were in the middle of what had once been a farm and now was as good as wasteland, going nowhere at all.

"Bo," Luke complained, when they'd been sitting still for only a few seconds.

Years ago, he would have made it a game. Messed up Luke's hair (wouldn't have worked), shoved on his shoulder (might have worked), started a fight about nothing at all (definitely would have worked). Now he had no options, no tricks up his sleeve. There was nothing to make of what he was about to do, other than what it was.

So he put an arm around Luke, turned and pulled him into a hug. Felt Luke hugging him back. Let go just enough to get room, then kissed Luke, hard and sure, because there was no going back. It wasn't a kid's game. Used Luke's frozen shock to gain leverage, push him back onto the groaning plastic of the General's seat, full of cracks that weren't there back when the farm was bigger and time was all they had.

Cornered, was what Luke was, so Bo let him up. Let himself get shoved off, because his cousin should never be backed into a tight space like that by anyone.

"Bo." Luke was wiping a hand across his mouth, and then, "I got to leave tomorrow."

"So you said," Bo agreed. "Look," _I'm sorry_ or _I didn't mean it_, but neither was true, so he didn't have the right to say them, not to Luke. Looking at the steering wheel in front of him, still feeling the buzz on his lips from where Luke wasn't anymore.

"That ain't nothing you should have done when…" Luke wasn't angry. Should have been sarcastic at least, but he wasn't that either. "I can't stay, Bo."

Yeah, well, that's what he figured when Luke told him he had to leave the next day. Overcomplicating things, Luke was good at that, even all these years later.

"So come back," Bo told him. "I ain't gonna stop you from going. You just gotta come back." Forced himself to look over at those blue eyes, that lined face. There went that adam's apple: we're in trouble, Bo.

"I can't promise—"

"Dang it Luke, you can so promise me that. I ain't telling you when you got to do it," back to looking at the steering wheel; it felt the same about him right now as it had five minutes ago. Bo wasn't sure he could say the same of Luke. "I ain't making no rules about it, except that you come back."

"Could be years." Anyone else saying it and it would have been continued denial. From Luke it was more like how he was thinking, and just being his kind of honest about it. Luke's truth wasn't cheerful or sad, it just was.

"It's already been years." Twelve, to be the kind of exact that Luke was probably being over there, still keeping his safe distance in the far corner of his side of the seat. Bo went back to looking at him again, watching how Luke wasn't halfway gone now, just sitting right there and tearing through his own brain, looking for logic or the right answer. "Ain't nothing important happened to me in all them years. I can wait a few more."

Luke didn't say anything, just looked right back at him with those eyes he'd never seen on anyone else. Never had a reason to look until he wasn't seeing them every day anymore, until he'd wandered off into a life that didn't include his cousin. Easy enough to do at the time; Luke was always there and would always be where Bo could find him, until he wasn't. Somehow it had never occurred to Bo that Luke could leave, too.

"What you got up there you got to rush back to, Luke? A girl?" It was a joke and it wasn't, the kind of thing delivered lightly, in hopes that the answer that came back wouldn't be heavy enough to crush him.

Luke just shook his head. "No one of consequence." Well, that was reassuring and at the same time, not. "It's high wildfire season, Bo. I was lucky to get away this long."

"I'll be here when you get back, then." Even if it took years, which Bo couldn't see why it should. A little prodding and Luke could come back in winter.

"Ain't you," and Luke was still slouched over there, far away and smaller than Bo ever remembered him being. "Found no one to take care of that itch yet, Bo?"

That itch, which was Bo's burden to carry. Uncontrolled libido, Luke would call it, but it wasn't that. It was wanting what he couldn't have and helping himself to what he could. It was never admitting, until today, what it would take to scratch it.

"Found lots," he answered with a shrug. It wasn't news, both him and Luke already knew that part. "They wasn't you." That there was the real truth of the matter.

Luke wasn't coming out of his corner, but he was nodding, seriously, making Bo's fingers twitch all on their own. Wiping themselves on his jeans, across his face, into his own hair. Not as much of that as he used to have, meanwhile it seemed like Luke had more.

"How long?" So many things him and Luke used to be able to say without words. Now someone had to do some talking, but half a sentence was still enough. How long have you been keeping this from me?

"Long enough," was a stupid, chicken answer. Not what he wanted to say, more the kind of thing he'd come out with when he was afraid of what he could lose, and Luke wasn't helping, staying all to himself over there. "Since before I left." Slunk away quiet like he could avoid a thrashing if only nobody ever found out.

Jesse never did know everything, though he wanted them to believe he did. Took going off to NASCAR the first time for him to realize that all the fool stunts they'd pulled were things his uncle didn't know and never wanted to hear about. They came back after only five months to an old man who breathed heavy when he walked and couldn't have wielded a strap without putting himself at risk for a heart attack. He got old, was Bo's reaction at the time, but Luke had only smirked and told him that it wasn't Jesse that'd changed. Still, Bo kept things from the old man on the basis of past threats alone.

It took walking away from Luke to learn that there were things worse than beatings. Nothing the old man could dish out hurt as much as the loneliness of spending each night with someone new, hundreds of girls from all over the country, all different and exactly the same. Not a one of them was Luke.

"You're an idiot," Luke was saying, but at least he was coming out of his corner now. Smirking and shaking his head. "You waited twelve years. And if that ain't enough, you waited one more week, to get around to it." There was a hand over Bo's, where it was resting on the stick shift. Warm touch of fingers there, and then there were those others on his face, tipping it to a convenient angle. Chaste enough kiss, promise of better things. "I'll come back," Luke said.

And the next morning, before the hassled drive to the airport, after packing and in those last seconds of privacy, Luke kissed him again.

"I'll come back," was the promise again. "Wait for me," was the condition.


	2. Wait For Me

_Hazzard in Hollywood_. Bo and Gabby, Luke and Anita, and... read at your own risk.

* * *

Wait For Me

It was achingly slow and heartbreakingly fast. Wasn't much to ask, wait for me, nothing Bo hadn't asked him for throughout their childhood. _Wait up, Luke_, followed by scraping sounds of small feet shuffling through leaves. Oh, he might have barked _hurry up, then_ back, might have been less than perfectly patient about it. But he'd almost always waited when Bo asked him to. Went off into the military when he got tired of waiting for Bo to catch up; left behind a buck-toothed whining brat and came home to a peer. Yeah, Bo was still Bo, too loud and too lazy and too quick to start things he couldn't finish alone, but he could mostly keep up by then. No more short, little, chasing legs, and even if he would never outrun Luke on foot, he was dangerously quick behind the wheel, the kind of reckless that would either save their necks or get them broken. He'd stopped asking Luke to wait for him. Which didn't change how many hours and days and years Luke had already spent waiting for his kid cousin to catch up, and it really wasn't all that much to ask that Bo wait now.

Of course, Jesse didn't exactly wait for Luke either, but that was just one more drop in a river that was already headed for the sea.

It started with talking, something he and Bo had never entirely mastered, at least not with each other. Doing things – small things like outrunning bullets and unrobbing banks – that they could handle. Looking at each other and just knowing what the other was thinking was what they'd always counted on. Actually having to do all their communicating through words put them at a handicap and gave Bo liberties to ask for ridiculous things.

First it was _can you come home for_ _Thanksgiving_ (no) followed by _how about Christmas_ (not this time) and then well _when are you coming home, then_ (I don't know). It was a good year, might have been great if Bo could have been happy for him instead of constantly nagging. The kind where Luke's pay went up by a solid five digit figure (and it wasn't that long ago when he couldn't imagine earning even a thousand dollars in a year) because he took a promotion and would be training the newly recruited jumpers through the winter. Oh sure, it meant missing a few more holidays, but Bo had stayed out on the road for his share over the years. It was the kind of sacrifice the boys made these days, in order to ensure that Jesse was comfortable and Daisy didn't have to worry about school expenses.

But Bo had never figured out how to deal with not getting everything he wanted all at once. The questions changed, took on a frustrated tone, on their worst days sounded whiny. Went from _can you come home soon_ to _when are you coming home_ then _how long do you expect me to wait_, and finally _what does wait mean anyway?_

"Damn it, Bo!" No, that wasn't what he wanted to say. It was just that he was tired from long days of work trying to keep twenty-year-olds with a reckless sense of immortality from getting themselves killed. It was like handling twenty replicas of his cousin all day long, except they weren't half the fun. Day after day of dealing with the likes of Bo, only to come home to disembodied Bo-voice complaining at him. But it wasn't his cousin he was angry at, shouldn't take it out on him. Calmed his tone to say, "Do whatever's gonna make you happy, cuz."

Which got him a sigh and confessions about how Bo had never been happy, not for years, and that a Lukeless circuit wasn't worth doing. Sounded like chopper blades and smelled of sweaty men bunking too close and arguing over Playboy magazines sent from home, while Luke got chicken-scratched letters about how Hazzard was lonely and Jesse's rules were too confining and I just miss you, Lukas – an unwelcome formality from a kid who thought suffering consisted of homework and early morning chores. Blonde boy, pulling his lips in over his teeth, showing Luke the all the scraped-raw places that it hurt, in hopes that, from thousands of miles away, he'd be able to blow on it and make it feel better.

"I miss you, too," was about the best he had to offer. Didn't help anything, so he added, "Do whatever's gonna make you happy," again.

Just about saw the rise and fall of that wide chest with the sigh, lips getting pulled in and eyes closing. "Yeah, I gotta go," was a forgone conclusion.

Winter was just considering warming to spring when the pressure changed. Instead of when will you come home, it turned into _you'd better_. Jesse wasn't well, according to Bo, but the man himself swore he was doing just fine. Impossible to tell who was more right, and Doc Appleby was no help, swearing he couldn't examine a man that wouldn't even open his mouth for the tongue depressor.

Which meant negotiating for time off, at a job that was dang close to military. Seniority as a jumper, Luke had. But as the newest trainer on the block, he got bottom dibs. Which wasn't too bad, really. First week of April and Luke could just about smell the Mountain Laurel blooming and see the songbirds making their way back onto fresh budded tree branches. Reckoned it was a good thing when he closed his eyes and heard Bo's rolling laugh, tasted the onions that he'd never think to eat on his tongue. Allowed himself to imagine the song of spring peepers and—

Daisy called. _Come now_, she said. _You can't wait until April, because Jesse won't hold on that long._ The man who refused to say ahh for the doctor was in the end stages of stomach cancer, almost before anyone knew he was sick.

In the next hour, Bo called. _Where the hell are you, Luke?_ was the beginning, middle and end of the conversation. _On my way_ was the best he could do, as he threw together a few things, made a good dozen phone calls, and got himself to Missoula. On standby for hours, static white walls and nothing to distract him but the echo of Bo's voice. _I need you_. All accusation and anger and it was less than Luke deserved. Which was fine, he fully expected to get the fist to his chin as soon as he reached Hazzard.

Hours of nothing but thinking; remembering the Jesse that was big enough to hold him still until anger melted to tears after the death of his parents, the uncle who was so sure of right and wrong that he could dole out a whipping, and strong enough that he could love the children he was raising afterward. Tried not to imagine what he'd look like now, white hair, white skin, white sheets and tubes… always tubes. Aunt Lavinia had been wrapped up in tubes, too, when they let him see her. Made himself stop thinking that way only to hear Daisy's forced calm in his ears, and Bo's distraught anger.

Two layovers and a lost night of sleep later, he was in Atlanta, getting picked up by Enos, who'd come from Los Angeles to support Daisy. Couldn't tie his own danged shoes on an average day, but Enos had managed to beat Luke home.

"I got a direct flight," he explained, and that just made it Luke's damn fault for living so far away from an airline hub.

"You seen him yet?" Luke found enough civility within himself to ask.

Frog eyes, was what they used to call Enos when they were rotten little brats, for the way he would go silent and just stare. Just like he did now, before the solemn nod.

"I'm driving," Luke announced. They were in a hurry and didn't have time to unwrap themselves from an unfortunately placed tree or two along the way. Enos was smart enough not to fight him on it.

And thanks to his never-forgotten youth as a wild-driving moonshine runner, Luke managed to get to Tri-County Hospital in time to see Jesse alive, if not conscious. Within an hour, every bit of stability in Luke's life was gone.

Bo's red eyes accused him of everything from selfishness to deliberate neglect, always from across the room, whether it was the hospital or the wake or the lawyer's office as they settled what little affairs Jesse had. A whole life of making nothing but moonshine and mud pies, and it all came down to a few acres of land, a house and a pickup truck.

Daisy let him hold her, kissed his cheek, rubbed his back, then went and did the same for Bo. Tried to bring them together, but Bo didn't want any part of it.

"You wasn't here when I wanted you," got hissed at him behind the closed door of their old bedroom. "And now I don't want you here." And for all that Bo was a spoiled brat, Luke had no argument. He gave Bo all the space the man asked for, and then some. If Bo was going to punish him, he'd bear it like the man he should have been weeks ago.

Bo's anger pounded itself against Luke like heavy hail on the back end of a thunderstorm. Seething, incensed words, in between bouts of icy silence. Just when it seemed like nothing but a tornado could put things right again, Luke woke up from a fitful sleep to Bo trying to find room next to him in that old twin bed Luke'd slept in for most of his life. Wasn't big enough for even one of them anymore, but he shuffled over all the same, and let Bo cling tight to his side.

"I'm sorry, Luke," were the mournful words. "I didn't mean it."

"It's all right," Luke told him, because it was. There was nothing Bo had said that didn't need saying, maybe a good thousand times more before Luke could begin to forgive himself for it.

Bo grieved and Luke held him, in an echo of a similar night some thirty-five years later, after they'd buried Aunt Lavinia. It was the last night before Luke had to go back to Montana.

No one tried to make him stay. Seemed like his family had finally gotten enough of Luke Duke. So he hugged them goodbye and got on a plane.

Calls from Bo were a lot more scarce than they had been before Jesse passed. And his cousin never asked when he was coming home. By summer Bo was engaged to be engaged to a sweet thing named Sarah-Beth that he'd met at the Charlotte 500. Luke wished him well, and took to spending his nights out so he wouldn't wind up sitting by the phone, waiting to hear from his cousin.

The Duke boys were finally men.

Luke was fine, which was why the smoky-voiced waitress at the lodge took it into her head to rescue him like a stray pup huddling at her door. _So sad, blue eyes. Why?_ Her name was Anita and Luke convinced himself he was in love. Bo said he was happy for him.

– – – –

"Well don't run," he hears himself saying. "I did. It was the biggest mistake I ever made."

It's got to be some kind of muscle memory that has him telling Bo all about Anita, teaching his cousin things that he hardly understands himself. Maybe gives more of her side of the story than his, actually. About how she wanted him, but he sent her off to bigger and better things. Maybe he cops to how she scared him, if not all the details of how and why. Mostly he stays in safe and simple territory. She had a life to lead that didn't (or shouldn't) include him.

This notion has to be foreign to Bo, who doesn't stay with anyone long enough to get left. Luke can recite their names just as easily as Jesse could go through the begats of the bible. Sarah Beth lasted until Elizabeth came along, and then there was Cheryl (with legs to rival a younger version of Daisy's, apparently), Mindy, Dana, and Marilyn (none of whom had any distinguishing features that Luke was made aware of), followed by Stacy Lynn (red hair and green eyes, and this is _love_, the real thing), another pass through Elizabeth and now this Gabriela girl. Who seems to love the shallow face Bo presents her. He wonders if she thinks there's something deeper going on in there behind the fool grin that's about all she ever sees.

Maybe there is, Luke wouldn't claim to know anymore. A week ago and no more, Bo greeted him with all the energy of a tow-headed boy, hands on his face, in his hair, up and down his back, anxious little voice in his ear telling him how good he looked. Maybe, he figured, it had been long enough that they could make peace, and—

"The point is," he counsels, more to his cousin's chest than his face. Dang clean chest, not half as sweaty and greasy as Luke's, and maybe that's the one thing that's never changed between them. Luke takes the dirty jobs, and Bo lets him. "Don't walk away from someone who wants to love you." And walks away to let Bo work it out, because Luke's in no position to do this for him.

It would be easier of he could find any evil intentions in this Gabby, but they're not there. She's just another girl with good enough vision to see just how pretty Bo is. But she seems willing to put up with the idiocy that Hazzard has dragged with it all the way to Hollywood.

She could be good for Bo; she's young enough to give him kids, even-tempered enough to tolerate his wandering attention span, and seems intent enough on settling down that she'll even take a hopeless country boy. Luke would like to hate her, but he can't find the handle by which to grab an objection. The best he can come up with is that she bears watching.

Which he can't do, not when Anita comes to find him at their campsite, and he has to stumble over dealing with her and Bo being in the same place. It's nothing he's ever wanted – for Bo to see him with her, to make his cousin live with that same sense of crawling skin that Luke gets every time he watches Bo touch Gabby.

So he leads Anita away, lets her ask what she needs to know, tries to give her the answers he reckons she wants. Remembers what its like to have someone that close – not so bad, really. Someone to listen to his brilliant thoughts, so out of place now that the Hazzard of his younger years is truly gone. A warm body to mold itself up close, smooth skin and soft hair. Things he expects he'd better enjoy right now, because when this little adventure is done he's likely to sign that new contract that the Forestry Service is so eager for him to commit to. He'd considered otherwise, maybe coming back to civilization as he knows it, but Montana is a safe distance from anything like watching Bo raise his children in the house the two of them shared for most of their lives.

"You're a ghost, Luke," Anita informs him. Maybe. Once, and not during any time that she ever knew him, Luke had a purpose, things people looked to him for. They were stupid things, maybe, less honorable than taming the rage of an out-of-control blaze before it can destroy lives and livelihoods, but they were things that required the presence of Luke Duke. He can be a smoke-jumping ghost, an anonymity, taking risks that people who have anything to lose shouldn't.

And when Anita's gone, Luke lets his ghost eyes rest on Bo – learn something, cousin.

Funny. For a ghost, he feels like a man haunted. By the first thirty years of his life, and a thirty second kiss that got lost in three years ago.

– – – –

He's been teaching himself to live a separate life from Bo's for years at a time. There have been spans of years where he's managed it well. It's just hard to do while they're in the same place. So he's started finding naturally divergent paths for them.

Which falls apart when they leave Hollywood and have that long ride home. Sure, Daisy's between them, but Bo's right there on the other side of her, asking him if he wants to stop, why is he so quiet, and what kind of tree is that? Constant Bo nattering, the kind of thing that makes him want to inform his cousin that ghosts don't communicate in the normal way, but that would require too much explaining.

"Shrub," he answers helpfully to the last question that was aimed at him. He doesn't know Arizona any better than Bo does. "Cactus, maybe."

And it's Texas before Bo gives up on him. A full day of torture before he's allowed to be the ghost he's meant to be.

Which works until they're home and Bo's every other word is about Gabby and how he can't reach her, he's tried her mother and her brother and... More overpowering than the smell of Daisy's fried chicken, louder than the rev of the General's engine, heavier than the axe has gotten in all the years since he used to chop wood on a daily basis, is Bo's worry. A ghost would haunt the barn through all of that, and Luke gives it some serious consideration. In the end, he rides it out more or less at Bo's side, countering Daisy's advice when it runs to the foolish suggestion that Bo scamper back to Los Angeles for the girl. Seems to Luke that if Daisy's in such a hurry to create a bi-coastal relationship, she ought to go back out there herself, after Enos.

At least, when the bus arrives from Los Angeles with Gabby on it, Luke figures he can get on with the whole ghost routine. Disappear into the dark and just haunt the edges of the celebration, but Bo grabs him in something close to a death grip. Damn if his cousin isn't going to keep Luke around him like a security blanket.

– – – –

"Stay," has a desperate sound to it that keeps Luke from laughing at the notion.

"I got responsibilities," he says simply. To haunt hillsides and crevasses on the other side of the country, where it's possible to be a ghost instead of living flesh watching the spits and sputters of things he doesn't want to know about. Like Bo mourning the girl that's gone home without any kind of promises one way or another. Luke, at least, isn't going to leave Bo hanging anymore. This here is going to be the breakup that never happened, because of a relationship that never managed to get started. "I got to go." Like Daisy before him, on her way back up to the school. Research. Looking through a microscope at everything except the remnants of her half-lost love.

Some things never change. Like Bo wanting him to be here when he's got plans to hitch himself back up to NASCAR next month. Stick close in case I need you.

And maybe the man's got a point. Luke was nowhere useful when the family needed him here a couple of years ago. He didn't listen to Bo then, and maybe he should be listening now. He's wavering there when Bo says, "Come back, then."

Some fifteen years back, he would have hit Bo for that. _Look Jesse_, he wants to announce now. _I finally got my temper under control._

Not that there is no meanness in the laugh he does come out with. "You gonna promise to wait for me?"

It's just sad when Bo sighs and asks, "You gonna make me beg again?" There ought to be yelling, fingers pointing, fists swinging. Instead there go those lips, pulled in tight over Bo's teeth. The resulting look is too angular now, not just hurt but harassed.

"Nope," Luke answers, and it's ridiculous. The way the kitchen is too small for this conversation, too bright and making his eyes hurt, too hot and hard to breathe in. "I'm going to leave and let you work things out with Gabby."

It's like watching a five-year-old version of his cousin, the way Bo's posture gets stiff and straight. You-don't-know-everything mixed with the-moon-is-so-made-of-cheese and, "What if I don't want to work things out with Gabby?"

"Bo." At least it's revving up to be an argument. That other thing was—ghosts shouldn't feel like that. "You ain't never wanted the same thing for two months running. You just let me know when you do." He's pushing past his cousin to the door, not that he's got any place to go right now, not without a packed bag. Just out and away.

Bo's gotten braver or more stupid since they used to live together. He grabs onto Luke's hand to keep him from leaving.

"Don't walk away from someone that wants to love you." It's not said nicely. "Ain't that what you told me, Luke?"

Bo expects to get hit; it's in the way he flinches when Luke moves. And for all the gentleness in the gesture, it might as well be a punch, but it's a kiss. Hard and angry, and popping away with a smack.

"That there is binding, Bo. You want that, you better make up your mind that it's forever." He's got to go.

Marches out into the remnants of a farmyard, stomps off to find what used to be fields, goes in search of woods. Decides it's a walk he's going for, somewhere about a mile into it. A long one, the kind where he tries to get lost in places he used to know better than his own name. He plans to be gone for hours, but it's still temporary. He'll have to go back, and when he does, Bo will be waiting for him.


	3. Leaving Luke Be

Turns out I couldn't leave them there after all. What follows is the 73 (I think) installments and ~150,000 words it took for the boys to find peace.

* * *

Leaving Luke Be

It's got to be the shabbiest bit of work he and Luke have ever done, rebuilding this house.

"Money will but you a new house, but never a home," Jesse had told them in his wise-old-man tones, but he'd let them do it anyway. Bigger, a couple of bedrooms upstairs now where it used to be dormer and attic. Brighter, too, windows opening up space where there was once nothing but gapped and half-rotted wood. Those were the clearly specified goals when they laid it out for the architect, then the carpenter and crew. Yellow, that was Daisy's contribution to it all. As much yellow as possible, to make it sunshine cheerful.

And yet, since the minute Luke slammed his way out the front door, the house has shrunk close around him, tight like cellophane clinging to his face, his lips and teeth, trying to make its way down into his lungs. Hot, too, for all that they designed windows across from doorways to catch a wayward breeze on a warm day (which today hasn't really been, not by Hazzard standards), clingy, sweat-soaked air, what little of it there is.

Dim and dingy, but he could fix that. Could turn on a lamp to illuminate Daisy's sunny motif, lemon fresh replacing dirty white, but he doesn't. The need for artificial lighting would only highlight for him the time that's passing and the number of hours Luke's been walking – away from him.

"Don't walk away from someone that wants to love you," was an older cousin's I've-been-there-and-I-know advice, not even a full two weeks ago. But Luke's been walking away from him ever since, small steps at a time. Wandering off with Anita Blackwell (and out of Bo's sight to— no. She's married now, to another man. Luke would never do anything more with her than the kiss on her cheek that Bo saw), walking away to crime-solve with Enos, conveniently leaving Bo with Gabby, being as distant as possible while in the same car, and the same house. Luke's getting further away with every day, and as soon as he gets back from wherever today's walk is taking him, he's going to take a giant step out of Bo's life, and back to Montana.

Dim turns to full-out black with that thought. Oh, there are still traces of afternoon glow in the house, just not in Bo's mind. It's the kind of premature sundown that Bo expects happens in Montana through winter; dark and bleak, to be offset by bright, sparking wildfires. It's a place where solace comes in the form of a woman that Luke chases off when she gets too close to loving him. It's a patch of snow on a solid-rock mountain, where his cousin lets the warmth of a youth here in Hazzard drain out of him and surrenders whatever chance he has for a happy future to the solid ice. The man is no different from the boy, hardening his heart against what hurts.

And Bo has hurt him.

Gabby is… easy. She's what Jesse and Lavinia would have wanted for him. She'd settle tidily into a life in Atlanta, give him pretty babies and cheer his every lap around that old NASCAR circuit. Daisy would come down to visit and keep her company, and they'd all spend free weekends and holidays in this dim and dingy house that used to be white. They'd trek their way up to the old graveyard to see their ancestors, and Bo would be able to face the people that brought him into the world, and the ones who gave him shelter and love, and tell them he'd lived up to their expectations and hopes, holding up his perfect children as proof.

The girl is also easy to waver over, a line that can be walked or wobbled away from, and it won't make a bit of difference. She'll wait and forgive, look at him with those giant and adoring brown eyes, and imagine she's seeing her future.

If she's also a thorn in Luke's side, well, that was the point. Making Luke stake a claim from more than one thousand miles away had been a fantastic failure, worse than taunting Jason Steele. Equivalent, maybe, to trying to outrun a revenuer with reinforcements on a deer path in the black of night: the kind of thing from which no good could come. But rubbing Luke's nose in him romancing a girl, like he'd done with Diane years ago, that ought to have worked. Sure the streets of Los Angeles would be an abrasive surface to find himself sprawled out over after a right cross from Luke, but it would have dragged his cousin into the here and now, away from the somewhere else the man's thoughts always manage to be.

Except it didn't.

Maybe he shouldn't have ever kissed Luke (oh, but he doesn't regret it, either), maybe he should have been more patient in the waiting. Could be he scared the man to death and sent him out on an endless run to nowhere specific, just away. Luke's spent a lifetime waiting so hard to lose what he loves that he's learned to keep an abyss between himself and anything that might matter to him. A sucking vacuum of nothingness to clear the surrounding air of anything that might get too close and make him feel.

Montana's perfect for that. Too far from anything meaningful to Dukes; neither Bo nor Daisy has ever made the trip out there. Beautiful country, Luke says, but glacial, windswept, self-contained and not in the least interested in growing a damned thing. Unlike the Hazzard dirt that's mostly a dull brown, but worms its way into fibers of denim, clings to boot heels, gets breathed into the lungs and lived.

Luke can run away from Bo, but he's not going to run away from home. Not again.

The house has been shrinking down tight around Bo since the minute Luke stormed out; by the time his cousin makes his way home, there's no air left to breathe, no light to see by.

"Cuz," he calls out, after footsteps finally come, boots kicking against to porch, freeing the dirt in an old habit meant to keep Daisy from taking tracked mud out on the innocent undergarments in his laundry. Door opens and there's exactly enough air in the room for him to speak.

"Bo," admonishes him, even before he can get to fully standing from the mushy couch that they've spent a lifetime abusing. _Don't start._

So he doesn't, just stands there and listens as Luke fumbles through the dark, kicking the table or maybe one of the chairs, whispering under his breath the kind of words that Jesse wouldn't ever want to hear in this house. There's no light to throw a shadow, but Bo knows Luke's made it across the kitchen and is hovering in the doorway, between the here and the there. It's the same place Luke's always stood.

Twenty-five years of his life and he could touch Luke anywhere, without question. Wrap both arms around the man, run a hand from the soft little hairs at the nape of his neck and right on down his spine, nestle their hips together and no one, not even Luke, would question it. Three years ago, in a fit of bravery or stupidity, he won the right to touch Luke's lips with his own, if only twice, three times, tops. Now he's stuck on the far side of the room from the man, with permission to touch him nowhere at all.

He should make an offer of dinner, maybe. Not that he's cooked any, but after long hours of running from the risk of pain, Luke ought to be starved. "Stay," he says instead. Because his cousin has no time for pleasantries or games, not when he's only taking a breather before running off again. "Here in Hazzard." Where Luke will be loved, if only by Rosco and Cletus, where neighbor ladies will watch over him and shame him into church, where the ice he's learned to cling to with all his might will melt into some wry kind of tepidity. Someday. "I'll go if you want, but you stay." Where Daisy can come down and see him once a month probably, bring him those apple pies he's always loved. Where Cooter can drag him out to the Boar's Nest on occasion, and maybe old Maybelle, who has always dug herself into everyone's business, will report to Bo from time to time. _Yes, I saw your cousin. He smiled at me and winked._ He'll live with the jealousy, just to know someone's able to make his cousin happy for a minute here and there.

"Bo," gets said again, sounds no more patient than it did a minute ago. "I ain't gonna talk about this now." And there he goes picking his way through an unfamiliar house again. For all the things they've rebuilt over their lives, from crashed-through fences to smashed-wall barns, this house really does have to be the most pathetic job they've done. Maybe, if only once, they'd taken a look at their handiwork, instead of just throwing money at it... "I'm going to bed."

"Without eating?" It's just natural. Someone's got to do the job of worrying after Luke, and Daisy's in the next state.

"Leave me be," is the reminder that Luke's never tolerated anyone but their female cousin when it comes to mothering instincts.

"All right," he answers, listens to Luke stumbling his way upstairs toward the bedroom they still share on those two or three times that they've both been in town. Oh, sure, it's not the exact same room, what with how it's in the newly created upstairs. But the beds up there are the same ones they had as young men, arranged in the exact formation that they used to be when they were down here in a room that doesn't exist anymore.

Bo settles back on the couch that he never managed to step away from in the first place. He's not hungry either, but then he hasn't burned a single calorie, sitting here waiting for his cousin to come home. And then walk away from him one more time.

Waking up is to the tune of a quiet click, familiar as a rooster's crow. Luke's tongue has just sucked away from his teeth and, "What're you doing out here?" gets asked. Yellow, not just the walls but the curtains and the couch and the air glow yellow; sunrise. Even the ends of Luke's hair, fuzzy with restless sleep, look yellow in the light.

"Leaving you be," Bo answers. Grunts as he tries to unfold himself from the spongy-soft cushions, and there's a hand in front of his chest. He takes it, lets Luke help him to sitting. "Breakfast?" he asks, because neither of them have eaten in pretty close to a full day, and they'll need energy for whatever's about to come.


	4. Currents and Contracts

Currents and Contracts

Breakfast. Bo always has gone about life stomach first.

But what the hell else can they do anyway? It's morning, at least there's breakfast to make things normal in a world where there are no livestock, no crops, no chores to be done. Mouthfuls of eggs will keep them from talking about misplaced kisses, rougher than fists, or absurd suggestions of returning to a home that isn't, not anymore.

"I meant it," Bo says, then licks his finger, looking at it accusingly for hurting the way it must. Fool never did learn about potholders, but he's the superior scrambler of eggs, so he gets the stove. Luke's fumbling at toast, wondering why they bothered to get Jesse this toaster oven that's as shiny as it was the day it came out of the box. "I'll go back to Atlanta if you want, but you should stay here." They ought to be eating by now, which would put a ban on talking, even if their uncle's not here to enforce house rules about full mouths staying shut. But Daisy's gone back to North Carolina, and can't neither of the Duke boys cook with half the efficiency of their cousin.

"Hand me that fork," he says instead of responding to Bo's continued foolishness. Hazzard is a shell of what it used to be; even the town square has shrunk up to postage stamp size. Hard to believe Bo used to get winded running from one end of it to the other while escaping the likes of Rosco or Cletus when there's not even enough ground there for a pickup baseball game. Maybe it's the wide open spaces he's used to watching burn, but Hazzard, if possible, has contracted itself down even smaller than the tiny dot on a map that it used to be.

And even if the county felt big enough to live in again, there's the farm that isn't anymore. What in heck would he do with himself if he lived here? Terrorizing the countryside in the General was fine when he was a kid, but it's nothing that appeals to him now. Besides, Rosco's too frail to go sailing off into the pond these days. He'd never drown, no one would let that happen. But he'd catch his death of pneumonia.

"Don't you go sticking it in that oven now – Luke!" There's Bo having his dramatics again.

"I ain't got no plans on electrocuting myself," he consoles or perhaps it's more like snaps. Somewhere between the two, and hopefully Bo will figure out that he knows what he's doing and leave him to it.

Maybe it's the way those eyes watch him anyway, regardless of Luke's superior knowledge when it comes to both electronics and fires. Or the angularity of that face, no trace of baby-fat there now, drooling grin replaced by a tight smile that looks more like someone's adoring father than lustful boy his cousin used to be. Could just be a track for his mind to follow, since the toast is now perfectly situated in the middle of the rack, getting evenly browned from above and below. Whatever the cause, Luke's grasping backwards in his memory, searching for the moment Bo finally looked outside of himself and started to worry about things other than the fastest way to fun. Had to have been after that prolonged tantrum he threw over that Carnival of Thrills, that fitful attempt to run away from home, when there was no way he could leave the county anyway. No question that his cousin wasn't thinking about anyone but Bo at that moment, never looked hard enough to see that Jesse's eyes were filled with tears, too. Got surprised that Luke was trying to save his life, even after he'd tried to pound his face in, had reckoned, somehow, that if he stormed off in a huff, everyone would stop worrying about him right then and there. Not stop loving him, Bo Duke always figured that love was unconditional no matter where it came from, even if it was a girl that was just passing through town. No, Bo played at love like it was an infant's game of peek-a-boo – if I can't see you, I don't have to worry about whether you love me or I love you. Like running away from his family would keep them from trying their dangedest to protect him for the rest of his fool life.

Honestly, the boy was easier to deal with back then. Selfish, yes, but that was all right, got made up for by the way he was so damn predictable. All grab and gimme, and it was a straightforward decision to refuse him and put up with the pouting until it passed, or hand over what the brat wanted and tolerate the glee. Either way there were physical manifestations; sobbing misery and a wet shoulder, or giggling hot breath in the ear and bruises where the giddy fool hugged too hard.

Now that he's taken to the occasional worry about others (well Luke, really) it's more of a challenge to figure him out. Like a foal on its earliest legs, Bo's wobbly ego is easily injured when his offers of generosity get rebuffed. For all that Luke waited most of his life for Bo to grow up, he has to admit to missing the boy that he used to be.

The bread's never going to toast right; it's that gushy stuff off a store shelf instead of Daisy's home baked loaf. Light brown now, but it'll go black if he leaves it in for another minute, so Luke's got that fork in there again, this time fishing the toast out and dragging it onto a plate. Same old chipped up pattern that anyone eating in this house has gotten placed in front of them since at least Lavinia's time, maybe earlier. Never occurred to him, when they invested in rebuilding the house, how Jesse would hold onto all the damaged and broken things inside and never even ask for help in replacing them. Seems like he and Bo are doomed to eat off of plates that are older than they are.

"Beat ya," he mutters as he looks around the edge of Bo's broad shoulder to see the still runny mess of yellow in that old iron pan.

"No fair," he gets informed. "You didn't tell me it was a race." Same cranky kid that has never liked to lose, always has an excuse for why he needs extra consideration. This might just be the Bo that Luke likes best. "But," he allows, "I bet you can't get the milk poured before I'm done here."

"Start your engines," is Luke's answer, an acceptance of the bet. He hasn't got a chance, and not only because the glasses are in the far cabinet and the milk's at the back of the refrigerator. It's a losing wager because he's going to let his cousin win. Maybe he misses those too-hard hugs.

Which is just too danged bad, really. Bo's grown up too much to give them anymore. Victory only means that tight smile, and hot eggs getting doled out onto chipped plates. Milk and toast and unspoken grace later finds Luke with a forkful of eggs hovering in front of his face.

"I can't stay," he says, coward's way out. Because his next words are, "I've got a contract," and then he stuffs as much food into his mouth as will fit. No talking with a mouthful.

"A contract don't mean nothing until you've signed it, Luke," is Bo's answer before he gulps down his own mouthful of food.


	5. Stupid Games and Stale Jokes

Stupid Games and Stale Jokes

"What if," has become a game. Stupid one, but for some reason, Luke's indulging him and playing along. "Don't forget your jeans," he reminds, and Luke glowers at him as if he knew all the time that one pair was thrown over the chair's back, but he didn't or he would have packed them at the bottom of his bag with all the rest of his pants. "What if you waited one more day to go?" He's been whittled down this far from his original request that Luke not go at all.

"What difference is one day gonna make?" Luke answers. There's some hope in that; every other suggestion up until now has been summarily dismissed. He's got to move quickly, though, what with how there're only little items like socks and toiletries left for the man to pack.

Bo shrugs, casual thing like he would have done years ago when his cousin was packing for a weekend-long Marine reunion. "Give me time to talk you into staying longer. What difference will it make to you?"

Smirk. "One more day I'd have to put up with you." It's a stale joke, just as distasteful as any leftovers that have been sitting around for fifteen years would be. The kind of thing Luke would have said to him when they both lived in this house and neither had shown any real inclination to leave.

"That ain't funny, Luke." It really isn't, but his cousin barely manages to lift his hands in some kind of a peacemaking gesture. _No harm meant, _maybe. At least if Bo's loose in his interpretation.

The open duffel bag on the bed's just about crammed full now. One more scan around the room, and Luke turns to walk off to the bathroom to collect such valuable items as a razor, toothbrush, maybe shampoo. Certainly they're more important than the conversation he keeps walking away from.

It's instinct or habit he can't seem to unlearn that makes him grab Luke's wrist. Answering habit is what gets him shaken off, at least that's what he hopes. Gives Bo a moment's pause, reconsidering what he's been trying to do all morning.

Maybe he should just let Luke go. At least, if he does, there'll be that moment of goodbye, when they can touch without awkward starts and stutters, when Bo can hold on to all of Luke, if only for a minute.

But his cousin's staring at him now, waiting for him to say whatever was so important that he had to go clutching at his hand. Bo's not sure anymore, maybe he was just trying to hold onto the silly game, since at least it was good-natured. But the moment's passed. He waves Luke off to collect the last of his personal items. Lets the man finish packing, lulls him into believing he might just get out of here. Follows behind him after the bag gets zipped, down the stairs, out onto the porch and—

"Luke," he says, because it's now or never. "What you got back there that's so important?"

Nothing more than a shrug in answer; they've been over this. A job, a contract, an entire mountain range to protect. If only once Luke had said 'a life,' maybe Bo would give in to that little urge to hug the man goodbye.

A sigh, and Luke keeps on heading out to the collection of vehicles in what's left of their farmyard. At least there are more cars than people; it might just be the only indication left that this is the Duke farm.

"Cousin." It wants to be an exasperated dismissal, but doesn't quite make it. Something in the way the tone goes up at the end instead of down. "Even if I was gonna come back to Hazzard," which is either progress or a revival of the game they killed back in the bedroom, "I'd still have to go back to Opportunity to get my stuff."

Opportunity. It's been a word to scribble on an envelope for years now, one that he has to check and recheck the spelling of, too few p's, too many t's, and then there's that second o that's always wanted to be an e. Dumb name for a place, at least he'd like to feel that way, but he grew up in a county named Hazzard, and had an uncle that talked endlessly about glass houses and stones. Opportunity, Montana. Mr. Luke Duke, general delivery.

"Then I'll come with you," Bo offers. "And help you pack it all up." Manages not to ask what his cousin's got waiting there that's of any value, but he can't imagine there's anything much. The dirt-poor life never seemed to bother old Luke any, and besides, spare money's always been sent home.

"It's a four day drive, Bo," gets hurled at him, full of the same kind of sarcasm he used to get for suggesting a cross-country shortcut. Odd objection, despite the tone. If time's the real problem—

"Only if you drive the speed limit," is the answer. Of course, looking again at the dirty brown Jeep Wrangler Luke must have gotten his first year out west and never traded in on a newer model, Bo reckons the speed limit's about what it's capable of. "Two drivers, half the time," is his second argument, but it's extraneous really. If the best protest Luke can come up with has to do with time, well, "I ain't got no place else I got to be, cuz."

He's getting halfway ignored, while Luke's tossing his duffel into the back of the Jeep, but silence isn't disagreement. There it is, the tailgate slamming followed by Luke standing there, hands on hips, all the intensity in the world in those blue eyes fixed on Bo.

"Give me ten minutes to pack a bag," because only Luke would take two hours to get a few things together, "and I'll be right back."

Which of course doesn't work out that way. Luke's behind him all the way, pointing out that it's not as simple as a few jeans and t-shirts (with a reminder in there not to forget his socks), but how he's also got to shut down the electrical fuses and turn off the water pump. Really, he ought to get the mail redirected, and what with Miz Tisdale gone now and the post office in the hands of a virtual stranger, that alone could take days.

"Luke," he says finally, looking over his shoulder from where he's digging that old sleeping bag out of the back of their closet. Funny, seems like he's just barely put it back in there after their little jaunt to Los Angeles. "Do you want me to come with you or not?"

His cousin sighs, runs his hands through all that hair he's got now, sticking out in even more curls that he had in his younger years. Looks away to the window or maybe the far corner of their room. Vaguely reminiscent of the boy who had to stand and face up to Jesse over fights and cussing, and just plain bad decisions. Look away, deep breath and—

"I want you to come with me," he finally admits.

Bo hands him the sleeping bag and turns back to the closet to find his long johns. Somewhere along this trip it's likely to get pretty dang cold. "Then quit coming up with problems," he grunts, because the floor of the closet is lower than he remembers it being. _That ain't no place to leave your clothes, boy_ echoes through his head in Jesse's voice, followed by Luke's snicker. _Fold them up and put them away right._ Which is fine beyond-the-grave advice, if a little late. "And help me here."


	6. Peanut Butter & Cheese Doodles & Beer

Peanut Butter and Cheese Doodles and Beer (Oh, My)

Snores. If Bo were a subtle man, Luke would put his head-back, mouth-wide, rasping snores down to some kind of cunning commentary on how much fun it is to be a passenger in Luke Duke's Jeep, but it's not that. It's just a soundly sleeping man. The too-gentle hum of a non-souped-up engine, the unchanging scenery of the interstate, the utter absence of conversation, (the too-little sleep on the couch in an attempt to _let Luke be_), these things seem to have taken the consciousness out of Bo. Not the racket, though; man never has figured out the meaning of quiet. It's a wonder that none of his family have gone deaf in self-defense.

Neck-breaking posture, and maybe that's what makes it so easy for Luke to rouse him.

"We there?" are the first words out of that yawning mouth, which is either cute or annoying, hard to make up his mind about that. Smacks of the boy that ignored logic in favor of hope, something Bo really ought to have outgrown by now.

"We ain't hardly past Chattanooga." It's road trip habit to wait until he's past a city to stop for gas or food. Fewer streets in the outskirts make it less likely he'll have to pull some kind of an illegal maneuver to get back to the interstate. Besides, out here the roads are bordered with grass; inexplicably, sidewalks depress him. Excess concrete where there ought to be nature. "Come on, get up and fill the tank." If he's coming along on the ride, the least Bo can do is make himself useful. "I'm going inside," the convenience shop that's masking itself as a charming little country store, but Luke knows better. Just look at all the yellow and orange painted across the façade of the place, like a beacon for those in search of junk. Everything inside will be cheaply made and expensively priced. "To pick us up some food for the trip." After all, Daisy's not along this time to make a gourmet meal out of wild scallions and mushrooms.

A couple of hours behind in his planned itinerary, and he's reduced to this. Fluorescent lighting shows every bit of half wiped away grime on the shelves and floors, and the place reeks of burned grease, or maybe that's meant to be pizza, like the neon sign at the back counter advertises. He gives that a wide berth and goes about looking for simple things. Can't miss the glass container next to the cash registers, warming lights over nondescript tan things that are advertised to be burritos. Something tells him that Gabriela and Cypriano wouldn't recommend them. Thought takes him back to the quiet moments in between Bo's snores from the passenger seat, when he had time to wonder why this trip west would lead his cousin to Luke's door and not Gabby's.

But there's not enough quiet in this place to think about it, not when Bo has apparently learned a trick or two about fast fueling on the circuit. Used to be the two of them could change a tire in under a minute; probably Bo still can. Luke hasn't even tried any such thing in years.

"Peanut butter and jelly?" is what the wise one has to say about the groceries Luke's snagged off the shelves, tops it off with a silly smile. There's a tiny glimpse of the boy his cousin used to be, quick, before the smile tightens down into the harder look that Bo's face wears these days.

"Protein," Luke informs him, holding up the peanut butter. "Besides, it don't go bad." Another road trip habit, to keep simple groceries on hand. As to the jelly, Luke wagers that Bo's sweet tooth will overrule any objections the man might have to consuming childhood foods.

"You learn that in the Marines?" Funny guy.

Luke treats him to a shrug. "You don't like it, pick out something you want. Just make sure it ain't gonna spoil." He heads up another aisle, leaving Bo to it. Finds some cheap, doughy bread, no better than what he was toasting this morning. Chastises himself for leaving that loaf behind; it'll go to waste now. Then again, that was before his cousin invited himself along on this trip; since that moment every thought of Luke's has been disorganized. Remembers now, how dangerous it could be to hang out too close to that underused brain of Bo's.

Once, and not that long ago really, because three years seems to go by in the wink of an eye when he's not running repeating laps around Hazzard, he made it all the way home with a tingle on his lips, and a strange twist to his stomach. The whole trip was dazed, but then again it was a flight, so he can't swear how much of it was the buzz he always gets when he's in the air. Wondering, the whole way, that it was _Bo_ who'd kissed _him_, when he'd never shown the inclination before. Amazed to hear that the feelings behind the gesture went back to a time when they slept four feet apart, and shared a jail cot at least once a month. Because his cousin's never exactly been the secretive type, nor one to tolerate a situation in which he can't immediately have whatever he wants.

Silly man he was, stumbling through his thoughts like a love-struck teenaged girl on her way to the prom in her first pair of high heels. Now, of course, it's all come clear to him again. He was Bo's flavor of the month, nostalgia mixed with impulsivity. He was wanted in the moment, but moments are not meant to last. They're just spaces in time, long enough for a car to fly over a creek, or a plane to fly from Atlanta to Missoula. Probably, by the time he landed, Bo was over him.

Or not. Guilt reminds him how he left his cousins to deal with the worst of Jesse's illness, how Bo was alone with his fears for weeks, and Luke wasn't in a hurry to comfort him. How fear turned to terror, and it was a long dark night before he made it back to Hazzard. Too late, Bo informed him, he wasn't wanted anymore.

Thoughts too heavy for this shiny-plastic convenience store, a fact that Bo reminds him of by dropping a bag into his already full arms. "Cheese doodles?" he asks incredulously. Aunt Lavinia would have put them over her knee if they'd ever dared to sneak anything of the sort into her shopping cart.

"They don't go bad," is Bo's logic.

"That's because they ain't food," he points out. Shoot, Bo might as well eat the plastic bag they come in for all the nutrition they'll provide.

"I like them," his cousin counters. "And all you said was that you didn't want nothing that would spoil."

Fine. His brilliant cousin's got him on a technicality. It's time they were leaving anyway. Two hours behind schedule, and besides, the scrawny teenaged boy with the pale face and dark eyes that's manning the counter has gotten quite enough entertainment out of the amazing arguing Duke boys. Kid ought to be bored stiff, just counting hours until he can get off work and go out with his girlfriend (he might be too skinny for the average girl's taste though – seems to Luke's memory like high school sweeties wanted something more sturdy to wrap themselves around on hot nights by the pond) but he's smirking over there, eavesdropping on how him and Bo sound like an old, bickering, married couple. Without half the charm.

Luke scowls at the youngster as he approaches the cash register to pay for the junk in his hands, hopes he scares the kid a bit. Puts his groceries on the counter and tries to be patient while watching his bread get manhandled in the effort to find a bar code. Nothing like the days when Mr. Rhuebottom just plain knew what everything in his store cost, and it had a bigger inventory than this place.

"What're we going to drink?" the other kid, his eternally developmentally arrested cousin asks, as if he didn't spend the better part of his youth camping and hunting, like he doesn't know the routine.

"Water'll suit us fine," Luke snaps, figuring that now he'll have to scowl twice as hard to keep the checkout boy in line. Fortunately, Bo goes off somewhere else to pout.

"Will that be cash or charge?" Seems like the smart-alec kid's voice is still changing. No wonder he's content to stand in one place all day, waiting for his entertainment to come to him. No girl will have him yet. Still, Luke would swear that even before girls there were better things to do with his time than work a counter.

"Cash, and don't forget to charge us for the gas. Pump two." Because Dukes are compelled to be honest and keep others from making mistakes, even if the ones they're helping out are snot-nosed and smug. No dirt under those fingernails either, when he reaches for Luke's money. It's enough to make a man grateful for whiskey, fast cars and slow days of farming, reminds him about how being poor gave them nothing but the sun, the earth and each other to love.

Bo's back, slapping a six pack of silver cans on the counter. Luke ignores both the beer and his cousin, grabs the plastic bags of cheap food and heads for the door.

"Ain't you going to make me prove I'm over twenty-one?" Bo's asking the clerk as a counterpoint to the tinkling bells on the door when Luke walks out. Leave it to his cousin to flirt with a barely pubescent boy. Man doesn't have the first idea about when to quit.

Tailgate's open and Luke's just found a safe place to tuck their soft groceries when Bo comes bounding up with every bit as much energy as he's always had. Starts to casually drop the beer in wherever it wants to fall, with no regard for how carefully the Jeep's packed. Luke barely grabs the sack in time to save those precious cheese doodles from getting crushed. "We ain't got no way to keep this cold you know," he informs his grinning fool of a cousin. Seems unreasonably cheerful; maybe the kid in the store flirted back at him.

Bo laughs. "Sure we do, Luke." Shakes his head and there's that controlled, rolling laugh. Nothing like the wild giggles of youth, but the look on his face is the same as ever. _Aw, shucks, cuz. Everything'll be just fine. You'll think of something._ "Cold mountain creek."

So Bo does remember their youthful camping exploits after all. Of course, they took place in Hazzard where, between the two of them, they knew every nook and cranny, had tasted the water of each stream to know exactly which one was sweetest.

It was impulse that made Bo kiss him three years ago, impulse that made Bo pick up each and every one of the girls he's gotten serious about since. Impulse, no doubt, made Bo invite himself along on this trip. And that's fine, in its own way. Predictable. Bo. What Luke can't figure is what the impulse was that made _him_ give in. Other than, for a moment back there, standing in the farmhouse where they grew up, he couldn't stand to let Bo go.

"Let me drive?" the still smiling fool asks.

Sure, why not. Luke hands over the keys.


	7. Invitation to Fight Over Nothing at All

An Invitation to Fight Over Nothing at All

Watching Luke develop a full head of steam is like keeping an eye on thunderheads building to the west. It's a skill, really, knowing when there's about to be a deluge or a tantrum, and either way, Bo can reckon on a violent night. Then again, the morning after always feels like it's been washed clean and fresh, and if a few branches fall, it's only because they were weak and ready to go.

It's not going to rain tonight, not a cloud in the twilit sky. But there remains the serious threat of storm all the same, there in the way Luke's wrestling with bent aluminum, shirt tight across his back where the muscles underneath must be standing out with effort.

"We could," is a fool's suggestion, no matter how much it's also the truth, "get ourselves a hotel room."

That look back at him from over Luke's shoulder claims Bo's the crazy one when it's his cousin that's trying to bend metal with his bare hands. Must be all that face hair that sets off blue eyes, making them twice as intense as they ever were.

"Or buy a new tent." It's a different world out there than when they last did this, two broke Hazzard boys, saving what few cents they did have for entry fees into the next local derby.

"Or," Luke says, looking over his shoulder again, "you could stop flapping your jaws over there and do something helpful."

Luke must figure that he's all grown up now, tossing out phrases the uncle used to wield as weapons when his boys got a little too big for their breeches. Bo's been pretty indulgent of this mood that wants to turn tantrum, but hearing _flapping your jaws_ come out of Luke's mouth brings a surprisingly rapid end to his patience.

"Ain't nothing I can do, Luke. That pole ain't gonna fit together no more no matter how many times you try to make it." And it's Bo's fault, obviously, that there's a problem at all. Too much stuff got packed on top of the tent, too much weight and the pole got bent. Which honestly speaks more to the age of the equipment Luke's trying to set up than the amount of stuff packed over top of it, at least if you ask Bo. Asking Luke, well, that's like standing under a flag pole in a lightning storm – just asking to get the most painful shock of your life. "We can get a new tent or we can sleep under the stars."

His cousin's head shakes over there. Either he's disagreeing or there's a mosquito in his ear. Could honestly go either way; the bugs aren't exactly being kind this evening. Bo's not really dying to spend the whole night out here with them, but Luke's hell bent on whatever it is he's trying to do.

Which, right now, looks suspiciously like storming off in a temper. Just like the man, always walking away – gone for hours and Bo's just sick of it. Heat in his face and, "Luke!" It's abrupt, angry, something that would get his hide tanned if there was anyone left on earth that would care to do it. "Luke!" comes fast on the second one, but he's damn tired of being walked away from.

His cousin turns to him, equally annoyed if the way his eyebrows are coming down is any indication. Doesn't say anything, just cocks his head slightly right. A cross between _what, Bo_ and _bring it on_, maybe. An invitation to fight over nothing at all.

"Where are you going?" Stupid question, neither of them knows the area. Back home it would have made sense, Luke could have answered by familiar landmarks like _down to the old covered bridge_, or _off to the Indian caves_. Here the answer's likely to be as clever as _anywhere you ain't, cuz_.

Air comes out of Luke's mouth in a puff, not quite a snort of dismissal. More like pure frustration at the major effort that he is forced to put into being civil. "To find a stick long enough to hold the tent up," he answers in that tight voice that means he's about had enough. Seems like those thunderheads Bo's spent a lifetime watching are on the edge of breaking into a storm. But, of course, Luke's fighting against the cracks of lightning every step of the way. "Don't you remember nothing I taught you?"

And he's off again, heading for the nearest clump if trees, leaving Bo to think about whether it was Luke or Uncle Jesse that walked him through basic camping survival skills, reckons it was a bit of both. Hardly matters, it was a long time ago now, gray and misty memory, same shade as the mountains he first learned them in. Before bright colors entered his life, wildly painted cars, checkered flags, coveralls plastered with brand names of auto parts stores and soft drinks. There hasn't been much cause for him to keep those particular childhood skills up; he's lost them in deference to lessons of speed, learned on midnight runs from revenuers.

There's water nearby, has to be. They're not that far from the Mississippi, and there's the sound of a stream burbling somewhere. They're on conservation land, where most people pay to set up tents for the night, but Luke's got a permit to camp just about anywhere he wants, courtesy of the United States Forest Service. Seems to get him a prime location, too, far from any other active campsites, or maybe Midwesterners don't much go for outdoor sleeping, because the place is half empty anyway. Not like the wilds of Hazzard by any stretch, but quiet enough to suit him. Then again, Luke would probably accuse it of being as crowded as a city.

The canteens got buried under the sleeping bags and groceries that were yanked out of the Jeep and piled on the picnic table, but with a little effort, Bo finds them. Used to be he and Luke had a matching set of them, one green and the other blue, but underneath the colored canvas they were identical. Almost. There got to be that dent in Bo's after it took a solo flight down Razorback Mountain's backside. Retrieving it at the bottom had to wait a couple of days until they came back that way, but the weather had been reasonably cool, and Luke had been generous in sharing what water his canteen, wrapped in that Army-green canvas, held. And it really hadn't been all that hard to locate the bright blue of Bo's canteen once they got back to the area to search for it. None the worse for wear, aside from that small dent near the spout.

Some months later, or it might even have been years, hunting in Bronson's Canyon on the other side of the county, Bo had knelt to fill his canteen in the trickle that ran through the red clay there. As the canvas got soaked by the stream water and sucked tight to the metal underneath, he realized the dent from its trip down the mountainside was gone. That night, while Luke was busy butchering the one rabbit they'd managed to bag during the day, Bo compared the two canteens. Somewhere along the way, Luke had taken the dented one and slipped it into the green canvas, then sheathed the intact one in blue.

Stupid thing to do, honestly, taking the damaged canteen for himself. It wasn't like a ding would hurt Bo in any real way, beyond depleting the volume of the vessel by a drop or two. Then again, for such a pointless gesture, it made perfect sense. Luke had always taken care of him, even when he didn't need it.

And as he lets his ear lead him to the lazy stream that runs a couple of football fields away from their campsite, carrying two vastly different canteens bought on opposite sides of the country, Bo reckons he can find a way to be more tolerant while Luke works his way to expelling that storm that's got to be building in him. Because behind every angry or frustrated word Luke has ever snapped in his direction are at least two silent gestures that were entirely for Bo's benefit, to keep him safe or make him happy.

Back at the campsite, he makes sandwiches while his cousin tests different sticks that he's dragged out of the woods, discarding several as too short or not sturdy enough. In the end, he finally settles on a relatively thick one, and pulls his knife out of the leather pouch at his waist. Whittles at the top of it to make enough of a point that it will fit into a hole designed for a metal pole.

"Thanks," he mutters when Bo hands him his filled canteen; the sweat's standing out on his forehead even if the weather isn't all that warm. Luke gets overheated without much provocation, and the temper tantrum that never quite happened, followed by wrestling with stick after stick, has been enough to leave dark stains under his cousin's arms.

"No wonder you moved to Montana," Bo says, same quiet tones as Luke's using now. "You never was one for the heat."

Luke shrugs in response to that, studies his handiwork. Shaves a few more curls off the end of the stick, then feeds it into the hole. Seems content enough with the fit, stands the makeshift pole up, and they finally have a fully erected tent.

"It's about time," is Luke's complaint, even now that he's been successful. "Getting dang dark." Bo hands him a sandwich on a mess kit plate. Seems an odd incongruity, such a sturdy dish for a flimsy meal. Luke stays seated where he is on the ground, while Bo takes a perch on top of the picnic table.

"We could start a fire," Bo suggests, tearing open the cheese doodle bag before digging into his own sandwich. Not half bad for peanut butter and jelly, if he does say so himself.

"Nah," Luke answers, and he's on his best camping etiquette, talking with his mouth full. Manners have never applied when it's just the two of them, the open sky above, and the wind shivering in the drying leaves. "We won't be up that much longer." Of course they won't. Early start tomorrow to make up for the hours they lost today. "Where's them beers you bought?"

A younger version of himself would have come out with a snide comment or two about how Luke clearly had no use for the stuff, what with his behavior when the time came to buy it. And it's still right there on his tongue all these years later, but he swallows it down instead.

"In the creek," he answers. "Ain't had time to get cold."

"That's all right," his cousin assures him. Seems like a good stick and a lousy meal are all it takes to bring out a more pleasant version of the man. "I ain't proud." Oh, but he is, Luke's always held his chin up high when it comes to his name and his heritage. He's a Duke, born of moonshining stock, a farmer and one hell of a driver. And he's never been ashamed of being a one of those things.

"All right," Bo agrees. "Just don't go complaining about how it's too warm to be any good."

Luke's right about the dark creeping up on them; the brush looms in odd shapes around him as he heads toward the low splash of stream water. But black skies are a moonshiner's best friend, and Bo has never minded how they steal his vision. After all, they make it twice as hard for any potential pursuers to catch him. So he reaches into the cool water and retrieves the six pack from under the current. Not even slightly chilled, but Luke's claiming a lack of pride, so he takes the beer back to their campsite. The last light of day reflects off his cousin, standing by the picnic table with a hand in the bag of cheese doodles.

"Hah!" Bo calls, showing no respect for the birds that are bedding down for the night with their quiet peeps. "Caught you!"

Luke's shrug indicates he's done nothing remarkable. "Just didn't want them to go to waste," is the explanation he offers.

Bo could point out how there's really no chance a single doodle would have been squandered, but he reckons handing Luke a can of beer is the better option. Sits down on the table again, and pulls couple of cans off the pack. Opens them both and hands one over. Offers a toast.

"To the most stubborn cousin I've got," he says.

"Daisy's worse," is Luke's answer, but he knocks his can against Bo's anyway. Sits on the bench just outside of touching distance and watches the first fireflies of the season flitting around their tent while they finish eating.

As soon as he's done with dinner, Luke sets to putting the food back into the Jeep where critters can't get into it, then announces his intent to retire. "I reckon I been mosquito food for long enough."

Bo nods his agreement into the dark. "Right behind you," he says.

But he's not as quick as he'd like to be with his nightly toiletries. Luke's far more practiced at camping these days, knows how to make short work of brushing his teeth while squatting over a stream. So his cousin's already in the tent, zipping up his sleeping bag, when Bo stumbles in.

Stumbles, trips, falls, lands on Luke and brings the stick his cousin worked so hard at turning into a tent pole with him.

"Bo," gets crabbed at him somewhere in there, but there's nothing he can do. Gravity's got a good, solid hold on both him and the tent – they're going down.

"Sorry," he manages, tries to keep most of his weight off of Luke, but fails. In the end, the stick knocks him on the head before hitting the ground as the tent flutters down around them both.

His breath is held, waiting for that same thunderstorm that's been brewing all evening. Vibration below him, and he reckons Luke's going to shove him off in a second, maybe look for decent leverage to deliver a painful punch to his jaw.

Takes a few seconds for him to realize that's laughter coming from Luke, figures it out right before it gets noisy. If the tent wasn't already down, it would fall under the violence in his cousin's guffaws.

He reckons his feelings ought to be hurt, what with the way Luke's having so much fun at his expense. Then again, it's only his pride that's hurt, and that's got no value at all, not next to the sound of genuine laughter coming from his cousin.

So he waits it out, still half lying on Luke's chest, until the man's back under control.

"Very funny, Luke," tries to sound miffed, but fails. "Now help me put the tent back up."


	8. Running Hot and Cold

Running Hot and Cold

_The landing was rough, must've been late on opening the chute. Ought to have hurt, but luck was on his side, no pain. Good thing, this wasn't anywhere he wanted to be stuck if he got hurt. Too close, they'd landed right in the thickest smoke, he could feel the heat radiating, and there was that glow of orange… too close._

_Role call, needed to get his whole team of jumpers close. They were just kids, young enough to have dreams of bright futures with pretty girls and sweet babies. Inexperienced, too. If any of them took as hard a landing as Luke did…_

_"Marks," he called out into the dry, unbreathable heat. _

_"Here," came from one of the vague shadows to his left._

_"Wiggins," was the next one he thought of, skinny redhead with freckles, young but stronger than anyone would guess. Smart, too._

_"Here," from a little further away than the last one._

_"Conklin," was the tall kid who laughed at some of the stupidest jokes Luke had ever heard._

_"Yo," was the response only an immature fool that imagined himself a comedian would give._

_Who else, who else? How many had he brought on this jump? Maybe the landing was harder than he realized, he ought to know how many kids' lives he was responsible for. Two days, at least, before they'd see anyone but each other again, and he needed to remember who they all were. Too hot to think, the air choking-thick with smoke – clouding his eyes and brain. Intense heat at his back and they were too close. Needed to figure out where his men were so they could retreat._

_"Smitty." How could he forget? The last kid to join the group, the one with those trusting blue eyes that looked at him with complete admiration. Like a puppy, and Smitty would have followed him home and scratched on his door for admittance if Luke hadn't sent him home to his equally young and trusting wife._

_"Smitty!" he called again; maybe his first yell had gotten tangled up in smoke and carried off into the skies._

_No answer. "Marks," he commanded to the most senior amongst the boys. "You see Smitty?" Nothing but crackle, too close, too close. Fumes in his lungs and he barely found the breath for one more, "Smitty!"_

_Singeing sensation on his back, how bad, how close was he? Couldn't turn around, not until he found—_

_"Sarge?"_

_Heavy smell, sickening, made his stomach roll, and he should have been paying better attention. Napalm, and this here wasn't exactly a naturally occurring fire. _

_"Sarge?"_

_Breathing got hard. He couldn't see much but he could feel just fine. Too much heat._

_"Sarge?" He ran toward the sound, at least that was the goal, but the next call, "Sarge!" somehow came from further away, everywhere, but nowhere he could manage to get to._

_"Where?" he hollered or tried, had a whole sentence he meant to call out. But even that single word was rasped, growled, not truly audible to his own ears._

_"Luke?"_

_What? What the hell was _he_ doing here? Bo, napalm, the cracking that might just be flaming branches snapping off to land on their heads, or maybe it was—_

_"Luke?"_

_Metal. Rattling, ripping. Tearing sound, near his ear. Cool air._

A zipper. A hand, finding its way around him, rubbing at his chest.

"Luke?" right in his ear.

Needs to disentangle his arm from where it's caught. Not a parachute holding him back, but a heavy down sleeping bag. He struggles against it until the zipper pulls wide open. Fresh, cool air on his skin where his clinging t-shirt ends on his bicep.

"Luke?" the hand comes off his chest enough for him to get his own arm free. Bo's behind him, curled around as much of his body as he can manage, fingers searching for a safe place to touch. "You all right?" In his hair, that's where Bo's roaming hand winds up. Pushing unruly strands away from his face. "Luke?" one more time.

He nods, he's fine now that the smothering heat is leaking slowly out of his sleeping bag, leaving his sweaty body to adjust to the fresh air around him. Smells clean and pure. Mostly. Mixed in there somewhere is the shampoo Bo used this morning, sweet stuff that no self-respecting man ought to put anywhere on his body. Then again, Bo's hair's never looked softer.

"Want to tell me?"

_No way in hell._ Besides, it's not the kind of thing that fits into narrative form. No intrigue and sorely lacking in plot. _I felt hot_ doesn't make for a great story. So he just shakes his head.

"Go back to sleep then," Bo suggests.

Not likely, but he closes his eyes anyway, settles into a comfortable position. Grabs that hand still fiddling in his hair, and pulls it back down to wrap around his chest again, threading his own fingers through Bo's. Reckons if his cousin thinks he's asleep he'll relax, too. So he breathes deeply and feels Bo shift behind him a few times, then finally quiet himself back there.

The next time he wakes up, it's the chilly air, lightly laced with wood smoke, that does it.


	9. Feels an Awful Lot Like Love

Feels an Awful Lot Like Love

About as alert as a bear emerging from hibernation – that's what Bo decides Luke looks like when he comes stumbling out of the tent in his t-shirt and shorts. It's still plenty dark and Bo would have let him be for another hour, at least, before rousing him.

"What're you doing up?" Luke asks him, hand making a mess of the hair on the back of his head. Disoriented, squinting into the light thrown by the campfire, rumpled. Not Luke's best look ever, and Bo can't quite figure out why his mind is filled with the urge to kiss the man.

"You ain't got no coffee," he says, instead of answering the question or giving in to the impulse. "I can't believe you didn't pick some up yesterday if you ran out of it." Because Bo can do without, in fact most days he doesn't have much desire for the of a bitterly abrupt way that coffee wakes him up, but Luke's always considered it the most important part of breakfast.

His cousin shrugs, toes at the dirt. "I usually stop somewhere and get some," is an admission of guilt, breaking whatever body of laws Luke imagines camping is restricted to. Specifically, no conveniences. "I don't much like the instant stuff." Throwing himself on the mercy of the court, expecting a sentence of laughter maybe, but all Bo feels is an amplified wish to kiss his cousin. Nothing to serious, just a gentle pressing of lips to lips. But he doesn't.

"I was going to make some toast," he offers. It's true, he would have gotten there eventually. In the meantime, he'd been watching the changing colors in the flames, listening for the sounds of birds rousing from their sleep. "If you want some."

It's not so much the desire to kiss his cousin good morning that's odd, he realizes. It's that he's never had the least interest in doing it to anyone else. For all the times he has used his tongue and his lips to get what he wanted, all the smooth faces he's tilted up to meet his own, all the mornings he's woken up with one warm body or another curled up tight and close to his own, he's never wanted to kiss them with pure affection and no expectations of anything to follow. The kind of thing he saw Uncle Jesse do to Aunt Lavinia most of the mornings of his childhood.

"You ain't said why you're up," is his cousin's incongruous answer; typical verbal arm-wrestling move. A lifetime of the same rhythm, and Bo can play perfectly by now. Sometimes, if his game is flawless and he gets very lucky, he can even win. He just has to stick to the topic of food as hard as Luke clings to the idea that Bo ought to be sleeping now, until they wear each other down enough for both topics to get dropped. "You have trouble sleeping?"

Well, yeah, depending on the definition of _trouble_. Only about half as strong as his impulse to kiss Luke now was the desire to throw an arm over his cousin in the night. He remembers rolling over, fitting his belly against the slight sway of Luke's back, laying one arm across his cousin's sleeping form. The man was out cold, didn't even budge. It was warm and comfortable, and Bo figures he must have slept as soundly as he ever has, at least until Luke kicked him. From there it was all squirm and struggle until he managed to get a hand inside his cousin's sleeping bag, until he woke the man up. His shin hadn't so much hurt from the scuffle as pulsed with the reminder that there had been one, and though Luke had dropped back off without too much effort on Bo's part (which had to mean his cousin hadn't rested much the night before), that heartbeat in his lower leg kept Bo awake. When he figured he'd been still about as long as he could manage, he'd quietly disentangled himself from the source of heat his cousin had always been, and come out here where his movement wouldn't bother anyone. Started a fire for something to do, really. Coffee had been an afterthought.

He shrugs in answer to Luke's question. "You hungry?" he asks instead.

"I guess," Luke answers, from where he's dug some jeans out of his duffle. If nothing else worthwhile happens today, he'll have this one moment to treasure: he won the battle over boring topic of the morning. They are going to talk about food, not sleep. "If you can manage not to burn the toast."

Tainted victory, his cousin manages to get an insult mixed in, but that's not going to ruin Bo's cheer. He smiles a bit as he watches Luke tangle with his pants. For someone who used to flawlessly execute ridiculously dangerous acrobatic stunts like jumping from one moving vehicle to another or swinging on a rope through Hazzard Square (and that one was just plain showing off), his cousin's never been particularly talented at standing on one leg long enough to get his pants pulled up the other one. Tiny remnant of the boy Luke used to be, and it might just be the best hope Bo's seen for the man in years.

"Grab the bread for me while you're over there," is the way he goes about ignoring his cousin's assault on his open-flame cooking skills. Loaf of bread and grill both land next to him when Luke walks past, still barefoot but reasonably dressed. While Bo sets to the kitchen duties yet again, Luke starts pulling their sleeping bags out of the tent and rolling them up. "Still early," he points out. "I would have let you sleep."

Luke looks up at him from his housekeeping detail; at least they've got equally feminine chores when they camp. "I slept plenty," he says, then goes back to work.

Cooking over an open fire is an art, at least if he's got to play by Luke's strict rules as to color and consistency of the resulting toast. By the time he has carefully browned both sides of several slices of bread, Luke's got the majority of their gear pretty well packed into the back of the Jeep.

"Here you go," he says, trying to hand over a tin plate with perfectly cooked toast.

"Just a sec," Luke answers, digging in the tailgate again until he finds what he's after. Turns out it's the jelly, and Bo ought to complain that it doesn't matter what color the bread comes out if they're only going to slather it in jelly, but he holds his tongue. Seems like a little something sweet is a definite improvement on otherwise dry and bland toast.

Luke settles on the top of the picnic table, feet on the bench. Set the jelly close where they can both get to it, and Bo places his canteen in that same neutral territory. Stays seated on the bench while the two of them pass utensils and vessels back and forth, then settles down to eating. Funny how saying grace seems to have passed with their youth; he can't remember a single time that the two of them have done such a thing since they moved away from Hazzard.

He's partway through his second slice of toast when one of those clicks comes at him from above, the kind that happen when Luke's worrying over something and his tongue sucks away from his teeth.

"You've got soot in your hair," Luke says, like its some kind of tragedy. Bo's hand comes up out of habit, but of course he can't find it; grit's not exactly detectable by finger.

"Don't matter none," Bo says, because it really doesn't. Once upon a time he might have been deeply concerned with the exact appearance of his hair, but that was when he expected every Saturday night to begin with a beer and end with the prettiest girl at the Boar's Nest. Now that he's had every pretty girl he intends to for the rest of his life, now that he's out here alone with Luke who has seen his hair filthy, flyaway, frizzed by rain and even stuck together with bubblegum that one time, he doesn't reckon a bit of dirt is of much significance. "Creek's too cold for me to go washing it this morning anyways." Because even if the water wasn't exactly icy last night, it's not a precisely inviting thought to go sticking his head in there this morning.

"We can heat some water over the fire," Luke says, reaching for the mess kit pan with the handle on it.

Bo grabs his wrist. "Ain't no need, Luke," he says. "It ain't like we're going to see nobody we know today anyways."

"Won't take but a minute," Luke says, pulling away from Bo's grip and settling the pan next to the canteen so he can fill it with water. Seems like his cousin's in one of his fastidious moods; Bo would like to remind him of days when they dumped beer over each other's heads end of a race, then didn't bother washing it out until the next morning, even if it did leave a sticky mess on their pillowcases.

"Luke," he says, just as a start. He's got full sentences planned about how he's gone his whole life without having a mother to worry about how neat he is, and it's kind of late for Luke to try to take on that role now, but the words stick in his throat when his cousin looks up from where he's pouring water. Blue eyes glowing in the firelight, earnest. This is important to Luke. Lord knows why, but his cousin needs to do this, and Bo reckons he can put up with the nonsense if it's that important to him. "Don't let it get too hot."

Luke smirks, nothing mean in the gesture. Maybe that's as close to a smile as he can come anymore. Or just acknowledgement that they've lived side by side for enough years that Luke knows the exact water temperature that Bo prefers for a shower. "Ain't gonna leave it over the fire for more than a minute or two," he agrees.

And when he deems that the pan of water has sat on the grill long enough (which might just be a matter of watching the steel get slowly blackened by licks of flame) Luke pulls it back off the fire, using one of his shirts as a potholder. Funny how he couldn't care less how dirty his clothing gets, but a little bit of soot in Bo's hair must be immediately rectified. Luke settles the water on the picnic table, then pauses long enough to pull a cheap, black plastic comb out of his back pocket. Climbs back up on the table and sits with his legs straddling Bo's back.

"Relax," he says. "Ain't gonna hurt you."

Somewhere between anger and amusement, that's the feeling behind the laugh Bo gives him in response. He's not exactly the same scrawny kid that used to holler when Uncle Jesse forced a comb through his hair with all the tenderness of a farmer grooming livestock; just didn't seem fair at the time how Lavinia's soft fingers had gone away, leaving him to be cared for by a man who didn't quite grasp the meaning of gentle. Jesse calmed with time, learned not to use quite so rough a hand. In the meantime, Daisy had taken to detangling Bo's hair until he could do it for himself. It's one of the few times he can remember when it wasn't Luke that took care of him. Seems like his so-grown-up male cousin couldn't stop laughing at tender-headed little boys.

Which Bo is not anymore, he has no expectations of being hurt. Then again, the way Luke's fingers follow after the comb that's been dipped in the water, finding their way through his hair like each strand's made of fine glass and might break if he mishandles it, the meticulousness with which he spends time on every section, the way he leans in close and warm, tending to his work with habitual gentleness, all feels an awful lot like love. Not exactly a good morning kiss, with all its fleeting sweetness, this here is something else, acknowledging a past lifetime spent together, and maybe, if Bo's really lucky, testing out a lifetime together in the future. So he relaxes back into the warmth of Luke's chest, and lets his cousin show affection in a way only Luke would.

It's enough, that feeling of being cared about, to get him easily through the rest of the morning, scrubbing dishes in the creek and stowing the last of their gear before pulling out of the campground at a still ridiculous hour. Makes it all right when he learns that along with coffee, Luke's road trip habit is to buy a doughnut or two for breakfast; besides, by the time they stop he's hungry again anyway. Allows him to smile at Luke's increasingly cranky complaints about the sorely lacking intelligence of the other drivers on the interstate.

It's the headache that starts to blare right behind his eyes that finally overrides the peaceful feeling of early morning communion with Luke. Sun's too bright, even if it is filtered through a thin covering of clouds. Bo closes his eyelids against it, settles his head on the window to his right. Lets it rest there for a few seconds, but the Jeep isn't exactly a smooth-riding vehicle. Two or three good bounces and he's shifting again, looking for a way to relax without having to take a beating from the way Luke's attacking the road in his effort to put miles behind them.

"You know," Luke says from over there where he must be going out of his way to search for bumps to hit at high speed. "If it'll help you sleep, we can stay at a motel tonight."

Funny, that same suggestion was the words of an idiot when they came out of Bo's mouth last night.

"I ain't the one with problems sleeping," Bo grouses back, as he fishes blindly into the seat behind him for something soft. Finds a gray, fleecy sweatshirt of Luke's; makes him wonder whatever happened to that old denim jacket his cousin used to wear every single day, regardless of the temperature.

He can feel himself being watched as he fluffs the cloth and stuffs it between his head and the window. Doesn't worry too much about where Luke's eyes are focused – he wouldn't be a Duke if he had to watch the road in order to drive safely. "I slept fine," the liar finally says to him.

"Sure, and you ain't never had a nightmare in your life, neither." Lets his eyelids droop closed, even if he knows full well that his cousin's still staring at him.


	10. That Way

That Way

It would, all of it, be easier to handle if he were younger. From setting up campsites without proper equipment to the suggestion that he has nightmares, everything could be dismissed with a bit of willpower and some deliberate eye-rolling. Even this bit of ridiculousness right here could be managed with some kind of joke, then the doctor's prescribed two dangerous jumps and a visit to the Boar's Nest to last until morning. (Well, old Doc Petticord might not have ever written a script for those particular activities, but he just shook his head and muttered things about the resiliency of youth whenever one of the Duke boys presented themselves with injuries gained in the pursuit of that brand of fun, and that smacked of approval all the same.)

"I been around the block a few times," Bo is saying to him, eyebrows waggling around in an approximation of flirtation. Too much hair; even now that he wears it shorter, Bo's still a relatively furry guy. Fuzzy eyebrows and sideburns, nothing like the pretty little thing he's pretending to be. Now those thick eyelashes dipping up and down over deep blue eyes might be convincing – if only the man had the first idea how to properly use them. "I know why you got us a room."

A hotel room; just one between them. Hell, they've shared the same space for almost their whole lives. Doesn't seem like anything for Bo to get all excited about now. And yet, there he is, trying to back Luke up to a wall. Fat chance.

It's a game, like wrestling used to be in the days when his kid cousin felt the need to put their strength to the test. Giggling, but deadly serious underneath; Bo would have struggled to the death if Luke hadn't let him win at least half the time. It got to be habit for them both, for Luke to mentally tie one hand behind his back and go at things with an utter lack of commitment. Funny how, when Bo finally began to build some muscles all his own, he squirmed and shoved with full intensity, never considering returning the favor of being gentle when the match called for it.

This here game is not going to be a nostalgic visit to their youth.

Mostly because Luke knows better now. What's going on between them these days is more dangerous than any moonshine run ever got to be, carries greater risk than facing down a disbarred NASCAR driver behind an illegal engine. Bo doesn't quite know the heat of the flame he's playing with.

It's there in the man's eyes, behind the silly attempts at flirtation, under that tight smile that's not anything like a drooling grin anymore. More like the look of determination Bo's always gotten when he can see the finish line, and there's still a car or two to contend with. Bo wants him as bad as any trophy he's ever chased, from national cups to the local derbies they used to dominate.

Same look he fixed on Gabby, and Luke figures Sarah-Beth and Cheryl got it, too. Any woman Bo's considered in the last five years or so has been a party to this kind of desire; not the charming smile of his younger days, but a clear I-want-that all the same. Christmas gift envy all over again.

Jealousy might be the most important ingredient to keeping one Bo Duke from losing interest. Just about every woman his cousin has ever stayed with for longer than it took to warm up a chilly night turned out to have strong ties to someone else – Gabby to Rafael from her brother's gang, Sarah-Beth apparently went back to an old boyfriend when the pre-engagement to Bo didn't work out, and those twins, Cindy and Sandy, were more into each other than anyone else. And then there was Diane Benson – oh, but he doesn't need to be thinking of that. Not when Bo's there in front of him, pouring gasoline onto a fire.

"I got us a room," is his best attempt at sidestepping the white elephant in the room. "Because you slept for half the day. Tomorrow you get to drive; you best be well-rested when the time comes."

Diane had Carl, spinning in endless circles around her, boys and boys after he'd been unceremoniously dumped. Nasty words to Bo's face and ugly deeds behind his back, and it had all made his cousin cling tighter to the girl. As long as someone else wanted what Bo had, he'd never relinquish his hold.

Luke's not going to be able stay at the center of that fleeting attention span. Oh sure, it's not that long ago that his cousin watched Luke walking hand-in-hand with Anita, and there's probably some lingering jealousy about that. It'll last through tonight, maybe next week. But it's not enough intrigue to keep Bo wanting more, and it's not like there's a line of girls waiting in Opportunity for Luke Duke to come home. Bo'll move on when he realizes that there's no one going to fight him for Luke.

And Luke'll be left remembering those first weeks after the Carnival of Thrills left town, when he realized the origin of his own protectiveness. Bo picked his way back to life from where his heart got broken, and Luke watched over him, half thinking he still needed to chase that little lady down and teach her a lesson.

_But why?_ – the question began to trickle through his brain, disturbingly imagined in Jesse's voice. Why revenge on the girl, who'd move on to another fairgrounds, another state, another man? The loss of Bo's goofy grin wasn't a good enough reason to – well to do anything stronger than say good riddance to old rubbish.

And for months after, any time Bo seemed cured of the woman's influence, ready to move on and drool over something new, Luke let his gut seethe for all of a minute before he started in on what a fool his cousin was. _Never learn, do you?_ he'd say, head shaking. _Come on, we got to get home early._ Nine times out of ten it would work, and when it didn't, Luke would find himself some girl willing to make all his sorrows go away.

It might just have been those twins that made him finally admit what never really had been a secret all along. He didn't want anyone else near Bo. And then maybe two months later, after one last-ditch effort, holding Candy's tiny body against his like he used to as a Marine, trying to love her like he had as a hormonal boy, there had been this: he wanted Bo for himself. A year of knowing that, living within inches, living within denial, and Bo wandered off into the abyss that the end of probation provided them. It was a blissful relief, it was a black hole of nothingness. Montana's been eternal summer compared to that one cold year of Hazzard without Bo.

And Bo kissed him first. Three years ago, because of a momentary want. It's back now, but it'll be gone again tomorrow, or the next day. Whichever day it turns out to be that the man recognizes that Luke's not exactly a sought-after commodity, that there's no prestige in having him, no one to emerge victorious over in getting him. For just this moment, until another, bigger and better thought enters his head, Bo wants Luke.

And what the hell. It's not like Luke's ever much resisted giving the boy what he wants, why should he expect anything to change just because Bo's pretending to be all grown up? It's all still a game to him, get Luke in a corner, goading about the deeper meaning of hotel rooms, waggling those eyebrows like they can bring back his virtue. Damn it all, if Bo wants to be a girl, Luke can accommodate him.

Kissing, before the thought is even complete. Shoving, like the crude farm boy he used to be, moonshine-running, skirt-chasing, got-nothing-so-there's-nothing-to-lose teenager all over again, and Bo's the one that's cornered.

Except he's not, not really. Oh, he's in the corner, shoulders stooped by surrounding walls, but he's still Bo. Jumping in with both feet, never bothering to test the water for depth, not even glancing down for boulders on which he might crack his skull. Kissing back as if Luke's that same safety net he spent their childhood being – perfectly reasonable to pull whatever fool stunt enters his turnip brain, because he's got family nearby and none of them will ever let anyone hurt him…

Once, and not that long ago, at least as far as the history of Hazzard and the Duke family goes, they had nothing more than the dirt under their fingernails, and even that was mortgaged. A house that might just get blown to bits by a good, solid spring wind, a mule that would as soon bite a man as pull his plow, some hulks of metal that were roughly car-shaped. They were poor as church mice, as the law liked to remind them, hicks and plowboys, as they got called by any stranger that felt the need to pass through town. They had nothing.

Now it's no real skin off either of their backs to pay more for one night in this room than they used to owe Boss Hogg on a monthly basis for the nothing they owned back then. The simple bags they're unpacking hold more clothes, gear, crap really, than used to fill that entire house. Everything they could ever want is theirs for the asking, just a few slips of useless green-printed paper away.

No reason, really, for Bo to hold back from grabbing whatever he wants, even if it is Luke's hair he's tugging on. Shoot, the man can replace anything that gets lost in these moments just by pulling that credit card out of that fancy leather wallet with all the pockets to hold his treasures. A new shirt for the one that's getting torn at by Luke's gripping fingers, a few extra bucks if the hotel gets snippy about any dents or smudges they might leave in the walls. And if they draw blood on each other, teeth or nails getting overly ambitious, the local emergency room will be glad to fix them up in exchange for the loose change in Bo's pocket.

Nothing to lose, that's got to be what has Bo matching his strength, pushing back from where Luke's shoving him into the wall with hands, hips, tongue, teeth—

And maybe he's even right, Luke reasons, as their mouths come apart, panting for breath. Maybe the Duke boys really don't have anything to lose. Not anymore, not since they lost each other. Not now that Bo sees him in the same way he's ever looked at anything he wants: temporary gratification. His forehead rests against Bo's shoulder at the notion. If that's what Bo wants, Luke's going to give in, just like he always has.

Which is why, when Bo's chin comes nudging at his cheek, he tips his head back up. Lets their lips come together again, lets his cousin out of the corner he's been backed into, lets those arms come around him instead of wrestling against the hold. Needs a place to put his own hands, and that's how his arms come to be looped low around Bo's waist. How they get turned around so that Luke's back is against the wall, he has no idea.

Dizzy, like banking too hard around a one-eighty spin on wet Georgia clay. Vertigo of a gully opening up underneath them, simple forward momentum the only means to keep two fools from plummeting into the hard earth below. Nothing underneath to support them, no wires to be suspended from, just him trusting Bo to get them to the other side, like they're no more than boys on an adventure. Seems he should have learned long ago not to let Bo drive. Then again, forgetting danger has been the definition of his life, both inside of Hazzard and outside; it's just easier to do with Bo at his side. Against his chest and in his mouth and—

It all comes to a crash landing the minute Bo's thumb makes a gentle sweep across his cheek. It's the first time he even realizes there's a hand there, warm and soft, cradling just as sweet as any girl's ever has. The kind of thing that claims more than Bo has a right to, not when they're in the middle of a fight.

So Luke turns them around again, reminding his cousin that this all started with a stupid goad, one he initiated three years ago on a patch of dirt in the middle of nowhere, inside the General's protective skin, with Jesse waiting in his yellow house for two fool men to stop acting like boys and come home. The ante's gotten upped a few times over the years by the Gabrielas and Anitas of their lives, but it's the same struggle it's ever been, and gentleness has no place in it.

There's a puff of air out of Bo's nose when his back hits the wall, a grunt into Luke's mouth. That's okay, Luke makes it go away just like he always has, or maybe it's like he's never bothered to before. Complaint gets smothered by direct pressure, hands on biceps, pelvis against pelvis, lips and teeth and—

Bo twists his face away. Pulls his arms out of Luke's grip and uses his chest to shove him back. "If you got to be that way," he says, and pushes past. Doesn't go far, doesn't bother to finish his sentence, just picks a bed and sits.

Luke nods. Even he's not sure whether he's acknowledging a need to be _that way_, or whether he's agreeing that Bo ought to walk away from him. The bathroom's door, shutting behind him, keeps him from having to make that decision.

Bo's still there when he comes back out with water droplets drying on his face and hands, rummaging through the paper bags of food. The cheese doodles, Luke notes, have already been found, along with the jelly and bread. It's the protein in the form of peanut butter that's gone missing, naturally. He ought to give his cousin credit for continuing to look.

"It's in here," he mumbles, digging for his own backpack. Got put away last, in the only bag still open at the end of the night.

"Luke," comes out in a sigh. It's about to ask for his forgiveness probably. Man's got the same temper the boy ever did, explosive and short-lived. In the end, after fingers have been pointed and fists thrown, Bo needs peace more than he needs to win.

But what the apology would be for, well, that's something Luke's not sure he wants to know. _Sorry I started it_, maybe, but even that's arbitrary. Because there's tonight and then there's three years ago, and that doesn't even take into consideration all those girls they threw in each other's faces back when they were young enough not to have known any better.

"Luke," frustration, because he still hasn't turned to look at the pouting man behind him. So he gives in with a glance over his shoulder.

Hands on hips, face flushed, lips still swollen, just plain Bo. Pretty as he's ever been. "I'm gonna go get a soda in the machine. You want one?"

That's not what Bo wants to ask, and they both know it. "All right," is all Luke bothers to say.

And a couple of hours later he realizes the futility of it all. He got them a room so Bo would have a comfortable place to sleep, but his cousin's over there in the other bed, trying to be quiet as he fights with the pile of pillows on his too-soft mattress.

"Bo," he calls out into the dark. No answer, he doesn't expect one. A childhood of room-sharing and he knows that Bo listens quietly and ignores loudly. "I might get nightmares from time to time." Stupid offering, means nothing. Just words, because it's been too long since either of them said any. But it's enough, apparently, for Bo, who gives up the battle with his bed and settles down in his first honest attempt to sleep.


	11. Hello Sweetheart!

Hello Sweetheart!

"Well, hello there, sweetheart."

At least, Bo thinks, he's not crazy. He's been feeling eyes on his back for a few minutes now, uncomfortable sensation, not like the normal, everyday feeling of Luke watching him.

"What's your name?"

That's a bit forward, even for a Duke. _Offer _your_ name first_, Aunt Lavinia always cautioned. _It's only polite_. And quite useful, honestly, in helping not to scare girls off. Give her a smile and a name, maybe a wink if she's shy, and she'll give you—

So much for ignoring whatever Luke's up to over there. He's going to have to see who his cousin's flirting with instead of doing his share of setting up camp. Got to know whether she's pretty, blonde, busty – all things Anita is in an obvious way, and he's pretty sure Luke would go for that kind again. So he glances over his shoulder from where he's got his current tent stake pounded most of the way to China, to see Luke squatting low. The girl in front of him is approximately blonde, small, dirty. Might be pretty, hard to say with the way she's got two filthy fingers jammed into her mouth. Too old for that, she's got to be school-aged, at least kindergarten. Seems to him his own hands got swatted for that kind of offense long before school; then again, it might have had to do with having chores from the time he could walk, which meant sticking his hands in places where they'd pick up the kind of filth that could make him sick.

One slobbery finger comes slipping out from where it's being sucked like a lollipop to point at him before retreating to the safety of the child's mouth.

"Oh, him?" Luke asks her. "That's Uncle Bo. Don't mind him, he's just grumpy."

"I ain't grumpy," he grouses, turning back to the canvas sprawled out across the ground. Has to finish staking it first, because they're still making do without a proper tent pole. Should have insisted on buying one yesterday. Now he's stuck pitching the tent near enough to a tree to tie up the unsupported side, but far enough away that they won't be sleeping on roots. And apparently he's not going to be getting help with the task anytime soon. "I'm just busy, is all."

Luke's nodding sagely over there. Bo doesn't need to see it happening to know what it looks like, not when that tone of voice gives it away. "Uncle Bo ain't grumpy," comes the correction. "He's cranky."

Frustrated. That's the word Luke's hinting around, and so far as Bo's concerned, he's got pretty good reasons for feeling that way.

"Where's your mama, sweetheart?" In all of two minutes, Luke's said more to the pint-sized drooling machine than he's managed to utter in Bo's direction all day. Or maybe that's an exaggeration. There was, after all, that squabble over who was going to drive. Lasted all of three minutes until Luke threw up his hands and tossed Bo the keys. It was the only dang reason Luke would admit to for last night's hotel room after all, that Bo would drive today.

The kid's still not giving away any state secrets when Bo spares a glance in her direction again. She's got Luke's complete focus; so much for unpacking the Jeep or brewing up tonight's fascinating dinner of peanut butter and jelly. Hem of the child's skirt is twisted around in her right hand, not quite, but almost revealing her underwear. Swinging back and forth, sucking on those same two fingers of her left hand, staring into Luke's eyes, half entranced, half flirting. Yeah, Bo can relate to that, getting sucked into a whole new world by gazing into the blue of those eyes. Or he could, if doing so didn't degenerate into thoughts of what he wants and can't have, memories of kisses about as pleasant as rolling on the hardpan of the farmyard and taking Luke's punches over the likes of a carnival and its pretty little proprietor.

Luke seems as enamored of the child as she is of him, and Bo's got less than zero interest in being the third wheel in that little relationship. Besides, he's ready to tie off the back end of the tent by this point, and that gets followed by erecting the pole at the front. Which is how he comes to be on the dingy inside of green canvas when the piercing voice starts hollering.

"Cassie!" becomes clear when it gets close enough. "Where you at?"

By the time Bo backs out of the confines of their sleeping quarters, there's another scrawny kid out there with Luke, blabbering apologies for a little sister that's not supposed to wander off like that.

"Quit being a pest, Cassie," he admonishes the girl, grabbing her hand away from her skirt to drag her away. "Sorry, Mister."

"Hey, there," he finds himself saying. "Be nice to your sister." Not that he's particularly fond of the charmingly slobbering ragamuffin. More like he remembers being dragged away by the wrist like that, apologized for when he hadn't done anything more than being friendly to neighbors. And though Bo might not be thrilled to death with the notion, these kids are part of their community – for this one night, anyway. Crowded campsite this time, and Luke's connections apparently can't buy them privacy in the Black Hills. Too many last minute vacationers, Bo reckons. "She didn't do nothing wrong."

The boy shakes his head in pouting disgust. Can't be more than eight or nine and already he's too smart for adults. "She ain't supposed to go bugging people. Or wandering off." Interesting sequence there, makes Bo choke down a laugh. Seems like his little sister could disappear all day and this boy wouldn't care, so long as she didn't go talking to anyone.

"What's _your_ name?" Luke intervenes from where he's standing now, watching the interaction. Maybe it's his intention to save Bo from a tormenter, even if this one's pint-sized. Strictly habit, after all.

Big sigh, and the boy's making a tremendous sacrifice by talking to them. Kind of refreshing, actually, a kid that doesn't pester adults with chatter. "Christopher," he answers.

"Luke," his cousin offers in return, walking closer and sticking out his hand. "And this here's my cousin, Bo." Interesting how the notion of them being uncles to these kids has gotten dropped. Not that he's complaining about that, exactly. Just wondering how it has come to pass that he ever came to be Uncle Bo in the first place.

A wave, he figures, will suffice, considering how the little boy thinks twice about even shaking Luke's hand. Gives in and does it – purely rote. Luke doesn't seem to notice that he's almost immediately dismissed.

"Cassie!" gets snapped again, in that same pre-pubescent nasal tone that drills through his eardrums and lays the foundation for a powerful headache. The rest of his headache gets built when the girl slams into his legs and clings there, like Bo's her knight in shining armor. "Come on!" he brother commands, taking a few quick steps toward her. And that only makes those arms tighten down around Bo's legs, slimy fingers no doubt leaving saliva trails on the surface of his jeans.

"Go with your brother," Bo tells her, leaves out the part where he's not exactly willing to put up with her hanging on him like this.

Luke's head is shaking over there, smirk playing across his lips. "She likes you, Bo."

"Dang if I know why," he answers.

"Hey," Christopher challenges, and Bo has to restrain himself from telling the boy to knock off the yelling (or maybe just cover up his own ears, but he outgrew that kind of behavior somewhere around the time he got old enough to reach the teats on a cow) and talk like a proper young man. "Don't you go saying those kinds of words in front of my baby sister!"

There's chuckling coming from Luke's direction, low and amused.

"Don't you laugh at me!" could have come from Bo's mouth, but didn't. Came from the stomping little kid in a temper.

Luke's hands are up in surrender. "I ain't laughing at you, Christopher," he swears and Bo can just about hear the _honest injun_ that Luke wouldn't be caught dead saying now that he's all grown up.

There's still some serious pouting going on over there in the little boy's stance, arms folded across his chest and shoulders heaving in righteous anger.

"He ain't," Bo mumbles as confirmation. "He's laughing at me." A lifetime of doing just that, and why would Luke stop now?

Christopher's not exactly buying what Luke's selling, still standing over there and staring down one, then the other, of the Duke boys. Bo catches his cousin's eye, then shrugs at him. _You're the expert on surly_, he wants to say. _You handle him_.

But of course, Luke's already got everything under control. "Come on, let's get you back to your mom," he says, walking up close to the boy again. "Show me where she's at," is the instruction.

Christopher's not having any of it. He's still over there, glaring. At least by now he's decided which of the Dukes he hates more, what with the way his eyes are fixed on Bo.

"Come on Cassie," the kid storms, but the tiny grip on Bo's legs just tightens at the sound.

Luke's over there rolling his eyes. "Pick her up, Bo," he says, because to him it's such an obvious solution. But Bo's got no intentions of doing any such thing. The compromise is him sticking his left hand down where she can grab onto it, making sure it's her tiny right hand that winds up wrapped around his fingers. So far as he knows, that one never made it into her mouth.

The girl comes with him for a couple of steps, before Christopher charges forward and grabs her other hand. Apparently it takes two of them to guide Cassie back to her campsite, and the only one who can make it all the way there without someone holding his hand is Luke. Some things never change.


	12. Flirting

Flirting

Her name is Mindy and she's overwhelmed in something of an obvious way, what with the fact that she's got a toddler on her hip and an open flame in front of her that could very easily start consuming the cardboard containers that she's left too close to it.

"I'm sorry," she says again, probably the third time since Christopher's carefully formal introduction of her. Someone's raised him right, at least halfway – the boy knows his manners. He's also gotten rather good at conveniently forgetting them when it suits him. "She's not supposed to wander off like that, and _he's_," with a quick, withering look at Christopher, "supposed to watch her."

Yeah, well, that explains a lot right there. Luke would wager a pint of Jesse's finest (a rare commodity these days and probably worth more than both him and Bo put together if they could sell it, but their word as Dukes was promised long ago with regard to selling whiskey) that Cassie's little tongue is stuck out at her brother right now from where she's hiding behind Bo's legs. There is nothing, and if Bo were an honest man he'd admit to this, more fun than getting an older sibling scolded. Especially in front of strangers.

Which he and Bo aren't anymore, not according to the small town rules they were raised on. In fact, if they were in Hazzard, Mindy's little ones would be tearing around the farmyard while Daisy forced a pie or two into her hands and insisted that Bo and Luke would be honored to carry ten jars of pickled peaches out to the trunk of her car. _I must have had a premonition_, she'd be saying, _that we'd make new friends today. I made far too much food for just us Dukes, and up until this moment I didn't have the first idea what I was going to do with all of it._ Charms learned under their aunt's tutelage, honed on the likes of drop-ins such as Mary Kaye Porter and Phil Ackley, not to mention the many times one Hogg or another lowered their standards enough to move in with the Dukes.

"They wasn't no problem at all," Luke assures her. "Was they, Bo?"

Ah, his cousin would like to smack him for forcing civility here but, "Shoot, they's welcome to visit us any time," manages to get past those gritting teeth anyway. Not nice to smirk at man that's clearly suffering, but Luke does it anyway.

"Where you headed?" Luke asks to pass the time as he starts clearing all the fire hazards from around the open flame that Mindy's doing a poor job of tending to.

"Gillette," she says, shuffling the child that's been clinging to her chest. Poor kid doesn't know what's coming until she's on her feet, clutching at her mother's knees and whining. "Oh you don't have to do that," she adds, trying to take control of her own mess, but it's hopeless when she's got a very flammable child between her and any progress. "Christopher, come get your sister." Poor kid.

"Gillette, Wyoming?" he asks, waving her off from worrying about her mess. "Shoot, you're almost there. A few more hours and—"

"Cassie!" Christopher's hollering again, "come on!"

Luke turns to see the boy trying to pry one sister away from where she's clinging to Bo's hand, so he can follow his mother's orders by taking care of the other one.

His cousin sighs; it's clear he's got no real interest in being Cassie's shield. "Leave her be," he says anyway, because someone's got to take mercy on the girl. "I got her."

Oh, four-foot-two doesn't like that a bit, considers a kick to Bo's shin if Luke's reading his signals right. But Mindy's pointing finger stops him cold, takes the wind out of his huffing little sails. "Young man," she warns. "You mind me."

The boy folds those skinny arms across his chest again, but this isn't defiance, too stoic for that. More like resignation, self-sacrifice for the women in his life. "Come here, Cameron," he says, and Luke can't quite figure out what his complaint would be with this development. After all, he's just trading off one little blonde sister for another. Unless the kid would like to make a case for how disgustingly cute it is that all three of them have names that start with the same letter. Makes Luke glad that he, Daisy and Bo are just cousins. They got picked on enough for the names they wound up with, would have been that much worse if they'd been Daisy, Donald and Daffy.

"A few more hours and a new car, and maybe we'd have made it," Mindy says, taking over from Luke in tidying her campsite. "Help me with that pot?" she interrupts herself, pointing.

Luke figures out what she's talking about, a big old iron thing, probably heavy even when it's empty, and this one's about three-quarters filled with water.

"Put it in the grill here," she says, once he's got it hefted. "I don't know what's wrong with that car of mine," an older model station wagon with ugly wood panel siding, faded from years in the sun. Texas plates; this family's a long way from home. "But it just keeps on overheating now matter how much antifreeze I put in there. I told Mama we'd be there yesterday, but we've had to stop early every night."

"Mama," Luke grunts from where he's settling the pot in the middle of the grill. Nice, solid rack there and it's a good thing, too, considering how heavy that pot turns out to be. "Your mother? In Gillette?"

She's nodding absent-mindedly, as she salts the water. Gonna be a mighty plain stew, if that's all she plans on putting in. "We're moving in with my folks, if we can ever get there. From San Antonio," she supplies, before he can ask. "Their father," and she looks over to where Christopher's settling in the dirt with a still whining Cameron, trying to distract her with some kind of shiny, plastic toy. And still glowering at Bo and Cassie, when he can take his eyes off his youngest sister. "Is away. On business." Little pitchers have big ears and Luke can read between the lines. There were a few kids in Hazzard, as he recalls, whose fathers went away 'on business' and never seemed to return. Somewhere around puberty he figured out exactly what kind of 'business' the men got up to.

"Bo there," he offers, "is a fine mechanic. Would be happy to look at your car for you. Wouldn't you, cuz?"

Nothing between the lines about his cousin's lack of subtlety when it comes to how he feels about that. Bo would really like to wring his neck for him. But the other task at hand seems to be babysitting children while helping their mother not to set fire to the Black Hills, and at least his cousin could be grateful that Luke's sparing him that duty.

He watches as Bo's flat-lipped, dark glare melts into a sunshine smile. There it is, the thing that the man his cousin's become hardly ever does anymore, that loose and easy grin that falls in love with anything in a skirt, and makes anything in a skirt fall right back in love with him.

"Yes, ma'am," the charming one agrees. "Be glad to fix your car for you. Keys in it?"

A few minutes of distraction while Mindy finds her purse and gives Bo the details of her car's ailments, leaving Luke to tidy away the last of the flammables from the area of the fire circle. He looks up to find Christopher glaring daggers at Bo's backside as he bends to the task of his initial scan under the hood of the car, crowded in by Mindy on the one side, and Cassie on the other. Tugging on wires and cables here and there, brilliant words falling from his lips about spark plugs and fuel lines. Nothing to do with the problem at hand and Bo knows that every bit as well as Luke. Wouldn't do to say that, to admit that he has no clue yet what's wrong or how to fix it, not when it would just about destroy his image as knight in shining armor. No, he'll fake it until he really figures it out, and all the while Mindy will be hovering closer on his every word until her breast is resting right up against the muscles of his arm. From there it'll be a simple whoops to a kiss, a transfer of grease an she'll be branded as Bo's.

"She's in good hands," Luke informs the little boy, not sure whether he means his sister or his mother. Doesn't matter, the kid's not buying a word any Duke has to say. He goes back to distracting the baby, even if he does shuffle his position until he can keep an eye on what Bo's up to over the top of Cameron's little head. "Where's your tent?" Luke asks him in an attempt to distract them both from what neither of them controls.

"Oh," Mindy answers, unexpectedly close to his ear. "We don't need one. Right, big guy?"

Christopher shrugs his agreement or acceptance, or simply acknowledges that he's been spoken to before going back to his duties at hand – watching Cameron play in the soft dirt and pine needles covering the ground, and glowering at Bo when he can. Seems it's Cassie that requires his protection.

"We just fold down the seat and sleep in the wagon. More comfortable, right, Christopher?" She gets full out ignored this time, and turns her crooked smile on Luke instead of her son. Looks every bit the harassed mother, with her hair pinned sloppily at the back of her head, a smudge of dirt across her face, and tired bags under her eyes. Not to mention the way her clothes hang on her thin frame like they used to fit once, but that was before she began wasting away from exhaustion. "Warmer," she confides in a stage whisper. "And easier to keep track of everyone." He gets the wink of one hazel eye at that. "Well," she adds, "looks like the water's about to ready to boil. Soon as it does I am going to whip up the best batch of spaghetti you all ever had – hand me that Tupperware, Luke – gonna feed you good for helping me out like this."

"Oh, no ma'am," he insists. "We's got plenty to eat over in our own camp. We couldn't put you out like that." He looks over to Bo for support and gets nothing more than a shaking head and a silly smile. Man's forgotten the manners their aunt worked so hard to instill. He turns back to the car, where Cassie's keeping a running commentary on the goings on as she kneels on the bumper and stares at Bo's work. Funny, he would have sworn the kid was mute.

"Bo looks hungry," Mindy asserts. "And he's the one that's fixing my car. So no arguments, Luke."

The dang woman needs to decide who she's flirting with.

— — — —

"Well," Bo announces, as he crosses through the shadows of the nearly-dark campsite. "No, Cassie, my hands are dirty," he says to the little girl tagging along and grabbing for a hold on him somewhere. "I got good news and bad news." Those dirty hands are itching to rub on Bo's jeans, but the man is showing more restraint than the boy ever would have. Maybe because Daisy doesn't do his laundry for him anymore, and it turns out that grease stains are hard to scrub away.

"Good news first, please," Mindy says from where she's stirring a thick, red sauce the smell of which would make Daisy instantly jealous. Oh, their cousin would never admit to it, she'd just cozy on up to Mindy until she wheedled the recipe out of her. It'd be a fair trade, though. Daisy would be sure to share one of the secrets of her own kitchen, learned at the knee of Uncle Jesse. Man could cook anything from crawdads to whiskey, and keep the whole county just about foaming at the mouth with desire. "And you can just hold the bad news for after dinner."

Christopher's on the move again, grabbing onto the older of his two sisters to wrench her away from Bo. Luke figures it's only a matter of time before a squabble breaks out, but he takes advantage of the children's momentary distraction to pull his shirt off and hand it over to Bo. It's simple country boy math that his cousin understands instinctively – about which of them is wearing clothing that can be sacrificed, and Luke's old, black t-shirt is of a lot less value than Bo's newer, button-down shirt and brand name jeans. His cousin takes the offered shirt without a word and starts to clean the grease off his hands with it.

"Hoo!" Mindy comments, stepping closer to them both. "Wow."

Luke's got no comment on the subject, but Bo does: "Shoot ma'am. You should have seen him in his prime, back when he was a hard working farm boy. Before he got flabby." Big, bright smile for the lady, elbow in Luke's ribs.

The dang man needs to decide who he's flirting with.

Then again, both of them have spent the better part of the evening flirting with a woman that neither of them wants. It's time for the whole charade to stop.

Which is why Luke ignores both of them, and offers to take the kids to wash up in the creek while Mindy finishes dinner. Winds up with him and Bo working together to make sure little Cameron doesn't go for an impromptu swim while Christopher glowers at them. Hard to say whether he's mad that there are two men touching his sister, or just at being sent to clean up at all. Looks like these kids aren't in the habit of washing before meals.

It takes some convincing to get Bo to lead the three kids back to their mother without him, but Luke needs to make a pit stop by the Dukes' campsite. His t-shirt, now sopping and filthy with the dirt of five pairs of hands, gets slung over a low tree branch, and he digs out a fresh shirt for dinner. Social graces, after all, dictate that a man should be properly dressed for a meal. And sanity seems to indicate that both him and Bo need to keep their distance from the young mother one campsite over.

"The good news," Bo is saying around the time that Luke makes it back to the glow of the fire circle and the picnic table that everyone's gathering around for their meal, "is that your car will make it to Gillette."

Mindy just about drops the plate of spaghetti she's been holding in front of Christopher. Seems like she meant to give it to him anyway, just a little more gently than that. But concerns about carefully tending to her children are forgotten in her urge to sprint to the other side of the table and hug Bo. "Thank you," she just about squeals in his ear.

"Mom," Christopher warns. Seems like the kid's actually on Luke's side of things. Or maybe just embarrassed by open displays of gratitude.

"The bad news," Bo announces, and maybe it's just an attempt to keep himself from getting kissed. Mindy's got that look that grateful girls get when they notice that the big, strong man that has saved the day also has blonde hair and blue eyes. "Is that once you get it that far, you might as well junk it. Blown head gasket."

Half of Luke wants to smack the man for being so blunt, and the other half figures Bo's just managed to save them from fighting all night. Over who got kissed and who didn't, which of them wanted it and why, and how it's only been twenty-four hours since they were kissing each other. What he does to reconcile his two halves is to slide onto the picnic table bench next to Bo, shoulder to shoulder.

"Ain't nothing else you can do," he backs his cousin up, "unless you got a couple of grand to spend on getting her fixed proper."

Mindy nods resolutely, and goes back to her serving duties. Within minutes they're all eating, and Luke reckons Bo might as well join the children on the other side of the table for all his terrible table manners. Boy must be hungry, the way he's shoveling it in with both fists. It appears that Mindy's spaghetti is more beloved than Luke's peanut butter.

"So, you're farm boys, huh? Shouldn't you be in bed already?" Mindy asks from where she's seated by her kids, feeding Cameron by hand. "Up with the rooster and all that?"

"No ma'am," Bo answers, and Luke shakes his head at the lack of control the man has over his flirtatious self. Charms the woman without even trying. "We ain't lived on the farm in years."

"Fourteen to be exact," Luke informs her.

"Fifteen," Bo corrects, but that was just him. Luke stayed that extra year, trying to give a damn about why the cotton wasn't growing well that spring. Come fall, after a pitiful harvest, Jesse had all but kicked him out. Claimed he needed to get on with his life, when all he'd ever really planned to do was inherit Duke land and maintain as many traditions as he could. But with Bo and Daisy gone, and their uncle claiming the right to retirement, there was nothing left for Luke to do. He'd applied to the Forest Service and was gone by the following winter.

"It's been a long time," Luke says, if only to keep the peace. Rests his bent arm on Bo's shoulder, lets his fingers dangle down to brush across the cloth of Bo's shirt. "But those were the best days of our lives."

Turns his head and looks at Bo, waits for his cousin to dare refute the notion.


	13. Nobody's Fool

Nobody's Fool

Bo Duke is nobody's fool. When it comes to most things, Luke would come up with six different ways to prove that statement false, but even his cousin wouldn't contest Bo's greater knowledge on two subjects: driving and relationships. And when it comes to the latter, Bo's been in more than either of them can count. Smug old Luke there might just say that numbers don't go that high. If he was in any kind of a pleasant mood. Which he's not.

And Bo reckons he's got reason to take offense to that. After all, there's no question in his mind that what Luke was doing for the better part of their little visit with the somewhat disastrous Collins family was staking his claim. And Bo's got no real problems with that, considering who it was that Luke was fending off, and who he was keeping near. Then again, it would be preferable if they didn't have to get a woman between them before his cousin found him worthy of holding onto.

"Dang it, Luke," he snaps, and that's a shame. He had no plans to be the one who broke the tense silence between them. "What's your problem?" Because for all that the man doesn't want Mindy to have Bo (as if he'd have Mindy, but that's an entirely different argument that's just going to have to wait its turn until the current one gets completed) Luke doesn't seem to want him for himself, either. Or maybe it's more like he just plain doesn't want Bo around. Or figures—"I wasn't the one that wanted her." Hell, fighting's got to be better than thinking.

Luke sighs, right there in the middle of stripping off his second shirt of the day. Out here in the open where there could be hundreds of ogling young ladies watching, but that's nothing new. The both of them found excuses to bare their chests right in the middle of Hazzard Square enough times over the course of their younger years. Besides Bo's not exactly fully clothed either; they're counting on darkness and sleeping neighbors to keep them from getting gawked at. Camping has always worked this way; tent's too small to get undressed in anyway, plus the dark serves as a cloak. Of course, most Duke boy camping was done in the wilds of Georgia where the only fool who might follow after them would be their own uncle.

"I know that, Bo," he says finally, letting the shirt settle back around his chest. Hands on hips, facing away. Funny how small the gesture makes him look. "Didn't neither of us want her."

"You sure about that, Luke? Because it seemed to me you was—"

"Yeah," Luke says, and it's calm, or at least not angry. Quiet, but not in that way that threatens violence. "I'm sure. Ah, hell, what a mess." His head drops then, still facing away. Hard to tell what he means, whether he's talking about Mindy's life or their own.

Makes it impossible to be mad, and that's a shame, because Bo was building up a good head of steam for a moment there. Now he's got to calm himself down, play nice. Essentially to be like Luke, who has always forced a calm on himself that defies whatever emotions might simmer underneath.

"That Christopher," Bo says, reckoning the kids are a safe enough topic, "he needs a firm hand." And a few bars of soap to wash out his mouth, which isn't exactly dirty, just a little too loud for the younger Duke's tastes.

Luke looks at him then, just a quick glance over his shoulder, then that familiar headshake. Bo, clearly, is an idiot. "He ain't that bad." And Luke's back to pulling clothes off. Man sleeps in shorts even in the chill that's setting in for the South Dakota evening. They aren't in Hazzard, and there's still some time until summer. "He's just trying to grow up too fast, is all."

"Uncle Jesse woulda tanned his hide good. For hollering so much, sassing his elders, and yanking his sisters around like he did." And that's the truth, no matter how tolerant Luke wants to pretend to be of the brat.

Bo's about as undressed as he plans to get, stripped down to his t-shirt and jeans. He reckons the sooner he can under the down of his sleeping bag, the happier he'll be, which is why he's already digging through the back of the Jeep for both his and Luke's bedclothes. They're at the bottom, of course, not having been used last night. They would already be out and unrolled in the tent right now if some unwanted kids hadn't butted their way into the Duke boys' campsite.

"That Cassie," Luke says, and he's close. Man can move deceptively quickly, and now he's right beside Bo, helping to shuffle the load of duffle bags and cooking equipment, loose clothing that really needs to be properly packed again and canteens. Yet another mess in their lives, but Luke's just holding it out of the way so Bo can dig out what he needs. Warm, his cousin's always generated a lot of heat, even mostly undressed like this. Skin touching skin, and Bo stays close a second or two longer than strictly necessary to pull the sleeping bags out. "She was crazy about you."

Sure she was, and it's about the only thing she's got going for her, good taste. Well, that's not entirely fair. Bo reckons that if she ever got properly cleaned up, the girl might just be cute. "She knows a pretty Duke boy when she sees one," he shrugs, and turns away to take their sleeping bags to the tent. There's a snort behind him, and that's good. He would loathe to have to compete with Luke for the love of a toothless five-year-old.

"You don't hate kids half as much as you always wanted us to think," Luke accuses, following behind him. "You just never wanted to babysit them Matthews kids."

"Shoot, cuz," he answers, comes out half groaned when he bends low to stuff their sleeping gear into the tent. When did he turn into their Uncle Jesse? Seems like only old men make that kind of a grunt when they get on their knees. Old men and pregnant women, anyway. "Didn't nobody want to look after them brats. I don't know why you didn't pass that duty on to Daisy." After all, they managed to make sure their female cousin got all the other unpleasant jobs in the household. Well, other than cleaning up after Maudine, because no smart man would want a woman's hands in_ that_ mess when she was the one that did most of their cooking.

"Tell you the truth," comes the answer from behind him, just before Luke whaps him with a pillow. _Get out of my way_, might be the silent request. Bo doesn't reckon his cousin's actually trying to start a pillow fight. "I didn't trust none of them boys with her. Oh, they was younger'n the both of you, but they was big. And randy. And them girls wasn't no better."

"Aw, how sweet of you," Bo simpers at him, crawling all the way into the tent and slipping over to his own side. Quick unzip and he's cocooned in down. Feels good, and gets even better when he gets the zipper pulled back up. Couldn't care less when Luke drops a pillow on his head as he crawls in, except it muffles his words when he says, "Protecting my virtue like that."

"Especially when you was so eager to give it away," Luke says, but it falls flat. Funny how the jokes of a lifetime don't work anymore, funny how there's a boundary between them that didn't used to be there. They were closer than this once. But that was back before they spent so much time in the close quarters of an RV on the NASCAR Circuit, before they went back a second time at the request of the FBI. Before Bo saw Luke go through the heartbreak of getting and losing a brother all in one week, and before a girl that might have had a real claim on his cousin came to town just long enough to resurrect old feelings, then left him again. Before calling Luke by his full given name stopped feeling like affection and started to seem like intimacy, before Bo ran off alone rather than face those demons.

Or maybe they stopped being close the minute he finally stopped playing games and kissed Luke. Whenever it happened, there are now things that the two of them used to say easily, but just can't be talked about anymore. Like Bo's past sex life.

So he lets the silence blanket them, listens to the flap of canvas as the tent shudders in the breeze. Waits for Luke to settle in, waits to feel warm. Wonders why his cousin's over there with his sleeping bag still thrown open, just lying on his back.

"Ain't you gonna sleep?" is what Bo settles on saying.

"Not with you yammering in my ear I ain't. Besides, you want them kids back over here? They hear you talking and they'll be back in no time." Because there's no question that when they get a mind to wander, Mindy's got no chance of controlling them.

But it's not the noise Bo's worried about it's—"You ain't wearing nothing, Luke. You'll catch your death of cold."

"Listen to you, talking like Aunt Lavinia," his cousin points out. "All grown up into a middle aged nag, ain't you?"

"Fine," he answers. "Get as sick as you want, just don't expect me to take care of you."

Luke's pulling a face over there, Bo's sure of it, despite the lack of light. One of those snide looks that mocks him for even suggesting that he'd do any of the taking care in the family. The kind that reminds Bo how he's the baby that Luke's looked after for his whole life and—

"I get dreams," Luke says, low and quiet. "When I get too hot. I guess I'd rather catch my death of cold."

Well, that's sad. Not so much the fact that Luke thinks he'd rather be sick for days than deal with a few minutes of terror (and those dreams must be worse than Bo knows) but that for such a schemer, Luke's not very smart when it comes to simple practicalities.

Which is why Bo sighs and unzips his own sleeping bag. Tolerates the chill with gritted teeth as he sits up out of the nest of warmth he's just created.

"Bo," his cousin grouses at him. "What are you doing?"

"Hush, Luke," Bo reminds him as he opens the tent flaps. "You want them kids coming over here?" Out into the cold before Luke's smart mouth can think up another way to call him an idiot, and over to the Jeep. Digging around in the back one last time, searching in the dark. Finds what he wants and slams the tailgate again. Over to the tent in record time. Unfolds the old blanket that's been nothing but more junk laying in the back of Luke's Jeep for the whole trip, and throws it over his cousin. Lifts a corner and gets underneath himself. It's not as warm as being zipped into his sleeping bag, but that's all right. Leaving the zipper open keeps his arms from being tangled up in nylon-covered down. Gives him the freedom to use one finger, his left pinky, to keep contact with Luke. Just that, a tiny point of skin on skin, but it's enough. If his cousin has a rough night, Bo will know, will wake up first and ease Luke into awareness.

Which is not exactly how it works out. As to who wakes up first, Bo's not sure. All he knows is that when he opens his eyes, there's enough light to see the way that Luke's rubbing at the back of his head, squinting and pulling his eyebrows together in the middle, like he's trying to orient himself.

This morning, Bo declines to hold back. He wants to kiss Luke good morning – so he does.


	14. Sneaky Bastard

Sneaky Bastard

Bo Duke is nobody's fool. Sneaky bastard is what he really is, playing the dumb blonde for the better part of forty years, when actually he's just been lying in wait, watching, categorizing, scheming. Mornings, he must have figured out long ago when they were two corn-growing, moonshine-running, desperately horny teenagers, are the best time to get something going.

Not that the first kiss tries anything of significance. It's slower than that, gentle and hesitant all at once, spooked almost, like a horse under its first saddle. Not sure what to do with the weight and tightness around its chest, and Luke can understand that. Some fires are more dangerous to play with than others and this one here seems like the kind that could burn a man beyond recognition. Reckons he'd better put a stop to it, but then his body wakes up and the kiss changes.

Bo's hand is there on his face again, touching, stroking, restless. But it's all right, because Luke's arm finds Bo's back, grabs hold and pulls until they're chest to chest, and those fingers come away from his face, grabbing a shoulder for balance. Hot touch on his bare skin, matches the warmth of Bo's breath, which comes in little puffing shorts out his nose.

Stupid way to kiss, lying on their sides with arms trapped underneath or between, and no real room to get noses out of the way. So he wraps one leg around both of Bo's, and tips them. Not enough room in a two man tent for this, Bo's shoulder brushes against canvas as they roll, but no real harm gets done. Luke'll have to remember to commend his cousin on his tent-erecting skills later on, assuming he gets around to thinking again.

Right now it's all feel, the hardness of ribs below his own, the weight where his hand got caught under Bo's body, the heat in Bo's tongue. Heads can tip now, mouths open, and kisses become real. His free arm can bear his weight while fingertips find Bo's hair and explore its length. Not as much of it as there used to be when they were nothing more than farm boys, but Luke figures even Bo Duke had to grow up sometime.

Hands, both of them, hot on the skin of Luke's back now. Rubbing, pulling, trying to get him situated where Bo wants him. Pull and tug and—

He's got the get that other hand free. Gives it a solid yank, but there's all of Bo's weight topped by his own, plus the friction of the flannel lining of the sleeping bag beneath it and Bo's shirt above.

"Bo," he's forced to say, because they've got a pointless struggle going here. The man's trying to shove him to a place he'll never get without the use of his left arm. Hand on the back of his neck pulling him back to the kiss he just broke, but, "Move, let me…" he says before he just about gets smothered again. More shuffling as Bo tries to line their bodies up, and the boy always was about instant gratification. Never has bothered to worry about whose arm he might be pulling off in the process.

"Ow," comes the complaint, but Bo drove him to it, that fist pulling on blonde hair until their mouths come apart again. Still no room for him to get any leverage with that trapped hand but at lest he can say, "Roll, Bo."

Seems like victory until his command gets obeyed. Typical of Bo to go too far, and now Luke's on the bottom. Both hands free but he's on his back and no real means to complain, because the kissing has started again. Easy to lose himself, to forget objections, in the wild syncopation of his own heartbeat next to Bo's, in the whirling reel of his brain at the feel of those lips on his, that hand on his face again.

_It's Bo_, that little voice in the back of his head reminds him, but it's not the kind of thing that can be heard over the sound of heavy puffs of air, the tiny sighs of need coming from the body on top of his. There's another thought caught behind the one about who this is that he's tangling tongues with, stuck beyond a place where his scrambled brain cells can access and decode it into lucidity.

_It's Bo_ tries to rear its annoying little head again, but Luke reckons the notion can wait to assert itself until his fingers find their way under that t-shirt in their search for skin. Moving the kiss, because there's more to explore than just the lips, there's chin and neck (and a day's growth of beard to remind him of how _it's Bo_). That hand tries to tip his face to where Bo wants it, but the man will just have to wait his turn, because Luke's just found a spot that makes the body against his vibrate in a moan. Whatever the pressure against his cheek was about, it's forgotten, as Bo all but collapses onto him, limp as an overcooked noodle. Mostly, funny how his neck still works to hold up his head enough so Luke can keep at that spot, and then there are those vocal chords encouraging him. Such a simple thing, just teeth and tongue, lips, and Bo is quiet, still, obedient. Seems like the kind of thing that would have been useful when they were younger (_it's Bo, your baby cousin_, but those last three words aren't the thought that has been waiting so long to be recognized) when Bo's impetuosity got them into more fights that there were days in the year. Just a quick suck on his neck, and the boy would have behaved.

_It's Bo_ stops being white noise the minute the man picks up the rhythm of Luke's tongue on his neck, echoes it back with a rub. Barest of motions at first, the kind of thing that could be mistaken for a shift of weight, but it's not. There's purpose behind it, parts rubbing against other parts until it's clearly deliberate, vaguely painful. _It's Bo, and he's still wearing his damned jeans_. Seams and abrasion where that kind of thing should never be.

"Bo," he says, gets an impatient sigh in response. He wants to say something about how the clothes have to come off (and in truth, it really is only the jeans he minds, what with the way his hand has slipped under the hem of Bo's shirt, found skin and sweat and warmth in there) but then that other consideration, the one that's been hiding behind want and need, pops to the forefront. "We got to stop."

There's a head shaking up there, and hand on his face trying to tip his chin for more kissing while the other one strokes against his chest in an attempt to lure him back but—

"Bo," he tries again, using his free hand to catch Bo's wrist. "Them kids, they hear us and—" The whine above him might just as easily come from a boy the age of that little Cassie, whose biggest pleasure seems to be sucking on her own fingers. "They ain't exactly gonna knock, Bo."

It was a good thought, important to express, but it has a counter-productive effect, when Bo collapses on him again. Nothing but weight and warmth and a heavy breath in his ear. "I hate kids," his cousin mumbles, makes Luke snort.

"Get off, Bo," is his answer to that one. "You're crushing me."

"Promise me," Bo says, and there's still that whiny edge to his tone. "We'll pick this up right here, tonight?"

Of all the promises Bo has asked for in their lifetimes, and there have been too many to count, this one is by far the least likely to be fulfilled. If they pick this up again, it needs to be in a more secure place, somewhere behind a solidly closed and locked door. And if they find themselves in that safe space, they'll have to start over again with a kiss, but before they even get there, those abrasive jeans of Bo's have got to come off.

Leaves crunch, could be kids, adults or just a raccoon. Doesn't matter, they've got to get out of this incriminating position. Luke wiggles and shoves, but, "Promise me," is all he gets in response.

"Bo," he says, because the movement is reminiscent of what he just called a halt to, warms him in ways that only a cold shower is going to be able to douse.

He gets ignored, dead weight still molding itself to his body, completely motionless except for the breathing and the thumb that's still stroking his cheek.

If it's a waiting game, Luke's got the upper hand; Bo has never had half the patience he'd need to win this kind of match. Sure, they need to get the tent down, pack it up and get on the road. It's bright enough by now that the sun might already have popped over the horizon. Yes, there's still breakfast to be eaten and gear to be stowed in the car again, but Bo will crack first. He might be lazy, but lying still has never been a powerful Bo Duke trait.

"Cassie!"

It's that shrill voice that breaks the stalemate, makes his cousin roll off of him, finally. Because the little girl is stealthy, and if Christopher's hollering for her, she's on the loose, could walk right into their tent in a second.

"You could have promised," Bo mumbles, as Luke sits up then pulls himself forward onto his knees. Crawls to the front of the tent and unzips the mesh there, followed by throwing the canvas flaps back. Yep, it's morning all right. "Where you going?" Bo pouts.

"Off to sit in the creek for a bit," he answers.

Bo snorts, but there's not as much humor in the sound as resignation. "Wait up, I'm coming too."


	15. Sitting in the Creek

Sitting in the Creek

Bo Duke is a fool. No, fool is too gentle a word for it, the fact that he's full-blown idiot comes to him with the same intensity of shock as the icy water he's just stuck his big toe into. Even Luke's skin is prickling up with goose bumps, though he's wading into the creek with the same brand of stoicism he exhibited after taking that horrific beating in that boxing match Boss rigged up all those years ago. One foot in front of the other until the water's up over his shorts, and if Luke's not exactly enjoying himself, at least he's not complaining.

Meanwhile Bo's figuring that there's got to be a better way to take care of this little problem. He eyes the blanket that his cousin threw over a tree branch with a certain amount of lust. He could take it somewhere, hide under it in a quiet corner where he can imagine out the conclusion of what he and Luke started, someplace where he and his hand can—

"Uncle Bo!"

Hell, no. He doesn't have to turn around to know it's Cassie, and that while she might be seeking refuge from her brother with the big mouth, there's no way he's more than a few steps behind her. Now Bo's got no choice but to follow his cousin into the icy creek in front of him. The little girl might not notice that extra lump there in his pants, but there's no way those assessing eyes of Christopher's will miss a damned thing.

"Cassie!" Think of the devil. And now he's not only going to have to go in, but his jeans are, too. No way he can get out of them with two underaged monsters in close viewing range. He strips off his t-shirt in record time, and starts the forward march. One step, two, three, and the cold water is wicking up his jeans toward his knees. And as sensitive as that part of him seems to be to the chill of it, he can't wait until it makes its way north.

"Whatcha doing, Uncle Bo?"

Luke's smirking at him from where he's squatting low in the water, nothing showing but shoulders and face. Cocks his head to the side in echo of the little girl's question: _yeah, Bo, whatcha doing?_

Two more steps, and the water line's above his knee, but still too low for him to safely turn around. "Taking a bath," he answers, gritting his teeth tight to keep them from chattering.

"In your clothes?" That's the incredulous Christopher; clearly he's close enough to get in on the game, too. Bo knew the brat's observant ways would mean trouble. He just shrugs his answer, and takes another step forward. Slow, careful; in a few more steps he'll be dealing with ice water where none should ever be. Looking down because the progress of his misery can be marked by the dark stain on his pants. One more step, and there's the shock of cold water hitting the brunt of his front side, sloshing halfway up his chest.

"Luke!" he hollers; he knows exactly what has happened, how his cousin skimmed his whole arm across the surface of the water to get that much of it in motion, to make the splash come far enough to drench Bo. "Luke!" he says again, means for it to sound tough and angry, but what comes out is more of a whine.

His cousin makes one of those faces that mocks his misery, and the children behind him giggle.

"So that's the way you want it, huh?" he demands. Doesn't wait for an answer before shoving at the surface of the water with his own hands. Doesn't create quite the magnitude of wave that Luke did, but it's enough. The way his cousin's squatting low in the water, plenty of the icy liquid makes its way into Luke's face.

Spitting, sputtering, and then the game is on. Luke lunges at him, Bo ducks away. Doesn't matter, he gets caught by the arm and dragged deeper. There's splashing everywhere between the two of them, and suddenly he gets dunked. And that's all right, from down here he can grab at Luke's legs, shove against them until his cousin stumbles backward into his own, less controlled dunking. Bo surfaces, shaking the water out of his hair and eyes, and waits for Luke to do the same.

Doesn't work quite that way. Oh, his cousin comes up, but close and threatening, then Bo's under the water again. Bumping his knee on a previously unseen stone, and while that hurts, it's nothing to spend any time worrying about. He's got more pressing concerns.

On land, Luke can outmaneuver him nine times out of ten. Solid muscle and quick, not to mention slick, that's Luke. But here, in the water, all that muscle's just dead weight, and Bo can have the advantage, so long as he concentrates well enough to take it. Up for a quick gasp of air, then he's back under the surface, taking Luke down at the knees. Meets him underwater, waits for the bubbles to clear just enough to find lips and they're kissing. Not for long, Luke didn't get a very deep breath, because he's already pointing up to the open sky above them. Bo lets him go, surfaces next to him. Gets on his feet to find the water's not much more than waist deep. Thinks about how they need to be careful playing this rough in shallow water, but before he can begin to express that, he's getting dunked again. At least he has the presence of mind to suck in a deep breath on the way down. More kissing, and it must be Luke that starts it this time, since Bo never got a chance to orient himself as to where his cousin was. Kissing and tumbling in the water, bodies in full contact, his hands grabbing onto Luke's hind end. Fumbling fingers at the button of his jeans, trying to find their way inside before Luke pulls away from him again, and up to where he can breathe. Bo comes up again too, a few feet away. Blue eyes, just above the surface, assessing. Picking the time and place for the tackle, and Bo begins to circle, looking for his own attack position. Ready, steady—

"Aren't you boys cute," gets giggled from the shore. It's not exactly a kid's voice, either.

"Howdy, ma'am," Luke says, hair plastered to his head in a wild pattern, and sporting that sheepish, lopsided grin that somehow seems to be saved for moments when he's caught rather literally with his pants down. Or missing all together.

"Hi Mindy," Bo echoes, because it's not like he can say anything else. Well, _go away and leave me and my cousin to making out in the cold creek_ comes to mind, but he's smart enough to keep the words safely tucked away in his throat. "We's just having our morning bath."

Luke elbows him under the water, but it's not like there's anything better he could have said.

"You farm boys sure are brave. It can't be more than sixty degrees." And that's air temperature. The water's got to be colder than that. Funny how tussling with Luke made him forget his suffering, but now it comes back to him with tooth-chattering immediacy.

"We's just about to get out," Luke assures her.

"Yeah, we's all clean now," Bo confirms.

More giggles from the shore, from the mother and all three of her children who are standing close to each other without fighting for probably the first time since Cassie stumbled into their campsite.

"Bo," Luke suggests. "Why don't you go back to the jeep and bring us some dry clothes?"

Oh, sure. Luke would figure on Bo being the better errand boy.

"Why don't you?" he counters.

"Because," Luke says. "You're in jeans."

Sure enough, he is. But it's cold out there above the surface, and jeans won't protect him against that.

"You're in shorts," is his brilliant reply. Then again, it seems as logical as Luke's argument was.

"White shorts," Luke reminds him, quiet and low, so only he will hear and get the meaning of what's being said to him. About how thin, cotton boxers will leave him all but naked in front of the entire Collins family. Excellent point, and Bo's just formulating his reply when Luke gives in.

"Ma'am," he suggests. "If you and the kids could just turn your backs…"

More giggles from the edge, before the group of them complies, Christopher forcibly turning his baby sister Cameron around. Luke's up and sloshing for the shore as soon as they're all looking away, missing the show Bo's getting right now. Oh, he's seen this part of his cousin before, but this morning it looks better than it ever has in the past. Luke's onto the bank and wrapped up in the blanket before he announces that it's safe for everyone to turn around again. Then he's gone, headed back to the Jeep.

Bo figures he must have gotten tricked into this; his cousin's rolled up in a dry blanket, getting warm while Bo's still waist deep in ice water. Somehow, despite getting what he wanted, Bo wound up on the short end of this particular stick. He starts to drag himself out of the water, one slow step at a time. If anyone was keeping track of these things, it would only be fair to note that pushing through water while wearing jeans has got to be a lot harder than doing so in thin, cotton shorts.

By the time he gets to the shore, just about disabled by his own shivers, Luke's back with a fresh pair of jeans for him. Hands off a corner of the blanket so Bo can get inside, too, then says, "Pardon us, ma'am."

Women and children turn their backs again, as the amazing, nearly-naked Duke boys perform their latest magic trick: figuring out how to get dressed without ever losing hold of the blanket. After all, one of those kids could turn around at any second. It would be nice if their mother could behave responsibly enough to lead them away from here, but it seems that's too much to ask. Luke's using one hand to help him strip off his wet jeans, very chastely keeping his fingers away from where this all got started in the first place, when Mindy speaks up again.

"I was making breakfast when I heard the two of you splashing around in the water. Got plenty for you to join us," she offers.

"No thanks," Luke answers, and the man's got a lot of nerve, speaking for them both without bothering to consult Bo. Shoot, it's not like it would have taken as much effort as saying the words. Just a look and Bo would have expressed his opinion. Duke boys don't exactly need verbal communication between them anyway. Bo shoves at his cousin's shoulder in annoyance. "If we leave now and drive straight through, we can be in Opportunity sometime tonight," Luke clarifies, both for Bo and the woman in front of them.

Mindy turns around at that, and Bo wraps the blanket tighter around himself. There's a slight giggle as the young woman catches herself and turns away again. "Opportunity?" she asks.

"That's where I live," Luke answers. "In Montana. The town's called Opportunity."

Bo kicks his wet jeans free, finally, and now they can both set to putting dry clothes on.

"That's a funny name," Mindy comments, and Bo makes a mental note not to mention Hazzard until they're miles away from this nosy little family.

"Nevertheless," Luke answers without betraying any particular feelings one way or the other. "It's where I live."

Twice in two minutes, the assertion that Luke's home is Opportunity. Bo needs to remind him of the purpose of this little trip. But not now, not until they can get away from this ridiculous campsite.

"Well, you can't be driving that far without a good meal," Mindy insists, turning around just as the Duke boys are dropping the blanket to the ground. Neither of them is fully dressed, but all the important parts are covered. "Now, it won't take me but a minute to cook you up a nice warm breakfast to travel on."

Luke sighs. They're going to give in.


	16. Damn Mindy

Damn Mindy

Damn Mindy. It's not a nice thought, but it's a repeating refrain in his head, set to the rhythm of the seams in the pavement as the road spins out endless gray squares of concrete in front of them. Damn Mindy.

For the omelets she made, light and fluffy, but with hidden dangers. Heavier on the cheese than he and Bo would ever have considered asking of Daisy back in the days when they were lucky enough to get anything other than sunny-side up eggs with toast a jam as a side. Mushrooms in there, but those were okay with him, even if Bo tried to be stealthy in picking his out. Failed miserably; at the end of the meal there was a pile of uneaten fungus on Bo's plate, all but licked clean of the egg and cheese that once surrounded it.

Damn Mindy for the onions so well embedded in egg that even if Luke_ had_ lacked the manners their aunt and uncle had worked so hard to instill in them, he wouldn't have been able to separate them out. Same onions that have been repeating on him all day long in hot little burps that get dislodged with every bump of any consequence.

Damn Mindy for those liquid eyes just begging for Bo to take one more look under her hood, while Luke helped her pack her mess into the wagon at the back. And for those unruly children of hers, running around at their feet, slowing the progress on a task that Luke was just trying to get done as quickly as possible. Damn the inside of her car for revealing little details of what life is like for the Collins family now: diapers spilling out of their box next to a pile of used tissues, a prescription bottle on the loose, rolling around with the broken crayons. Luke at least tucked that into a grocery bag so the kids wouldn't get into it during the drive. After that came what he figured was scrap paper, but when he flipped it over it turned out to be a photograph.

"His father," Mindy said, close to his ear, and damn it for how Christopher was out there loving a man that it seemed likely he'd never see again, for how he takes that out on his sisters now, never letting them out of his sight. And for how Cassie's already running away from being needed that much.

Damn Mindy for insisting on kissing them each goodbye, for the way she threw her arms around Luke's neck and just giggled when he never opened his arms for her from where they were locked across her chest. Damn her for kissing him anyway, even if he gave no indication that he wanted her to.

Damn Mindy for turning to Bo next, for smiling at him in that same needy way she had for Luke only seconds earlier. For hugging him close, for managing to get his arms slung low around her waist, all but touching her rear end. For the kiss that lasts through three clicks in Luke's brain, and damn Mindy for looking so right there, hanging around Bo's neck.

Damn Mindy for the fact that they could be a hundred miles closer to their destination right now. And damn Mindy for the fact that Luke's no longer in a hurry to get there.

"Luke," Bo says from his slouched position over there in the passenger seat. He's wearing Luke's hooded sweatshirt against the wind blowing in from his window, but they've got to keep the air circulating through the car if there's any chance of drying the wet clothes that are hanging from the hooks over the rear windows. "When we get to Opportunity—"

"It'll be the middle of the night," Luke informs him. "And we ain't doing nothing more than going to sleep."

Heavy breath from Bo over there. When Luke glances in his direction those dark blue eyes are fixed somewhere out the window to his right.

"That ain't what I was talking about," he mutters as much to the passenger mirror as to Luke.

But whatever was on Bo's mind, he's going to keep it to himself. Which, Luke has to admit, is probably the smartest thing either one of them's done all day.


	17. The Middle of the Night

The Middle of the Night

Mindy, it turns out, was good for something. One particular thing only, maybe, but there is that one function that can't be denied. Like Aunt Lavinia used to always tell them, _everyone's got a least one thing they are good at_. Of course, it seems now like that was just one of those sayings meant to keep peace amongst three squabbling brats, each insisting that the others didn't know anything.

Anyway, there was a singular purpose to Mindy, which seems to have been to overstuff two Duke boys with breakfast foods, just about to the point of popping, making the rest of the day's stops few and far between. Luke doesn't even opt for store-bought coffee, driving right on through the morning. Bo's happy to get the wheel when he does. It's true that driving makes him contented, but in this case he gets the added benefit of deciding when they'll make rest stops. If Luke had his way, Bo's pretty sure that his bladder would have to explode before they'd pull off to do anything about it.

Which is why it's such a surprise when Luke tells him to get off at the next rest stop that comes up. It's even more unexpected that Bo comes out of the men's room to find that there's picnic table filled with the makings for yet more peanut butter and jelly; then again, it is approximately dinner time.

"Ain't got a lot more light in the day," seems to be the excuse, but that's just silly. They're moonshine runners, or were once. After dark is when their instincts kick in; in truth him and Luke never have much gotten the hang of doing anything of consequence during the daytime.

"Montana," he informs Luke, as he sits down next to him. Gets a funny look for it, there's a whole bench on the other side he could be occupying, but him and Luke have always eaten side-by-side. Or almost always, and all those other meals, eaten at any distance at all, never could fill Bo up, not completely. "Has got to have the worst rest rooms of any state I ever been in."

Gets snickered at for that. "Perfectly fine trees, though." And that's just crass, the kind of thing Daisy would swat him for saying. "Men here are too tough for clean bathrooms." Well, then, it stands to reason that Luke fits right in.

Minutes are lost to shoving sandwiches in their mouths, then passing Luke's canteen back and forth. Water from the creek they played in this morning; Luke topped it off just before they left. Bo swallows the last of it. "When we get to Opportunity," he starts.

"It'll be close to four in the morning, Bo." Serious eyes, chastising him for thoughts he wasn't having. Luke must've been at least tinkering with the notion, though, and that's interesting.

The thoughts Bo actually was having, well, Luke's look and tone indicate he's got no interest in hearing them right now. _Don't push me,_ right there in the impossible blue of those eyes, and it's not a threat, more of a request, so Bo lets it go. For now.

"Then I'll nap now, and you wake me up at midnight to take over." Driving that is, because even a Duke boy knows better then to go on for another ten hours or so in the dark.

Luke's already screwing lids onto jars and jamming leftovers into bags. Good thing the trip's coming to an end; the cheese doodles are long gone, and they are down to their last few slices of bread. Still have plenty of peanut butter and jelly, though.

"I got the rest of the drive, Bo," he gets informed. "The roads here ain't exactly straight." Then, before Bo can point out the obvious, about how curves are ingrained in every bit of driving he's ever done, from moonshine running to racing, there's this: "It's hilly country, and not like Hazzard. It's – once you've seen it in the light, you'll be fine. You just shouldn't go figuring out Montana mountains in the dark." That, and a sigh, about sums it up.

So he settles into the passenger seat, watching the scenery until there's none more to see, then just feels the sway and bump of the car underneath him.

"Frost heaves," Luke announces about the time he starts shifting around. The suspension on the Jeep isn't exactly forgiving, and the seat has more bounce to it and Bo likes. "The road expands and contracts with the changes in temperature. Eventually it warps at the seams." He's getting a science lesson when all he wants is a comfortable way to sit, so he can stay awake and make sure his cousin's alert for the back end of the drive. "Ain't never really broke that seat in, neither," Luke tells him. "Don't have passengers much. The springs in there are still pretty new." There's a little confirmation of Bo's sanity in that last statement. He'd been pretty sure that the passenger seat was mocking him all along with how uncomfortable it seems.

"That's why you wanted to drive the last leg, ain't it?" he mumbles, but Luke just smirks and shakes his head.

"Ain't _that_ bad," is Luke's assessment of the situation.

And it's not, really, not after he finds the blanket on the back seat, jams half of it under his backside, and pulls the rest around him. Turns the bumping into more of a gentle bounce and sway, lets him sit relatively comfortably and talk to Luke.

But Luke is Luke, whether he's in Georgia or Montana, and before long he runs out of words he feels like saying. Leaves Bo to a quiet vigil of his driving, and sweet daydreams of a morning playing in an icy creek.

The next time he's alert is because there's a big old hand shaking at his shoulder.

"Come on, Bo. You got to get up 'cause I ain't about to carry you."

"Where?" he asks, but it's just remnant confusion, left over like the warmth still trapped under the blanket with him. Cold air on his face, and he knows they're at the end of their journey. Wherever that is; it's too damned dark to tell.

He stumbles to his feet, but that's not his fault. The stupid blanket's tangled around him, clinging when he wants it to let go. Eventually, the two of them come to a compromise wherein the blanket can stay with him, so long as it stops impeding his ability to walk. Now on reasonably stable legs, he finds his way to the back of the Jeep, fingers fumbling for the latch. Cold metal, wet. Must've rained on the last leg of the trip, maybe. Hard to say, hard to make sense of anything, except Luke suddenly there next to him. Hand on his wrist and pulling.

"Come on, this way," is the whispered instruction. So quiet out here, almost muffled feeling. Even in Hazzard, which isn't exactly the big city, there would be a bevy of sounds, from raccoons scrapping for territory to livestock settling in the barns. If all else failed there'd be wind dancing through the trees, or a mouse scampering along dead leaves. Here there's nothing but cold air, everywhere except where Luke's still pulling him along by the hand. "Follow me."

Bo tries to say something coherent about how there's a car to unpack, duffle bags full of clothes he's going to need come morning. Makes perfect sense to his ears, but Luke just keeps pulling on him.

"We'll deal with all that later," he murmurs.

Bo follows along obediently. Blind like he is, he has no real choice. Trips over stairs that Luke wasn't thoughtful enough to warn him about, loses the warmth of that hand in his, but that's all right, because there's a steadying grip on his elbow. "Watch yourself," gets muttered in there somewhere, too, but it's useless advice. Hard to watch much of anything in the pitch black stillness where the only things that are real are the pressure from where Luke's touching him, and the tripping hazards at his feet.

Three steps (could be four, what with how he sort of missed that first one) and a flat surface, then there's a creak. Luke's touching him nowhere now, but there's a jingle of keys, then another sound of a door being opened. Smell of old wood, or maybe that's the smoke of an ash log fire, like they used to burn at the stills. There's a hand in his again, and, "Step up," gets muttered.

The screen door slaps shut behind him, and he wants to step in further so the heavier door can get closed as well, but Luke's stopped cold where he is. Metallic clank, the click of switches, and suddenly there's light. Not a lot of it, just a lamp next to a wood-frame couch, but after the pitch blackness, it's blinding. Looks away from it, turns toward Luke to find those blue eyes just as squinted down against the assault.

While his cousin's closing the fuse box, Bo shuts the heavy door to what is very clearly a log cabin. Rustic, that's what his NASCAR teammates would call it, but to Bo it's just about perfect. No cheap plaster on these walls, just tight-fitting logs, wooden surfaces lacquered to a shine. Hardwood floors, just as carefully varnished, and the occasional rug just to make it look lived in. Not a ton of furniture, at least not from what he can see. Beautiful and stark, and for all that it's not very big, it's anything but cozy. Striking, is what it is.

"Come on," Luke says, grabbing him by the hand again. Oh, he's wide awake now, can see just fine. He doesn't need the help, sort of resents being rushed, but he doesn't shake his hand free – kind of likes the way it feels there, held in Luke's. Crossing the distance of this open room toward the back of the house takes almost no time, but in that brief span of seconds, Bo catches sight of the framed photo right there under the only light in the room. Black and white, must be twenty years old now, at least. Probably got taken with that old camera of Daisy's, but Bo doesn't quite remember even posing for it. Just him and Luke on the porch to the old farmhouse, the home they grew up in, which bears little resemblance to what's standing on that same plot of land in Hazzard now. Peeling paint and ripped porch screens, but none of that matters to the two young boys in the photo. It's got to be from after Luke's military years, and probably before they got put on probation. Which narrows it down to being 1977 or so.

Must've been a good day; Bo wishes he could remember it. Luke's there behind him, one step up so he can be taller, no doubt, arm slung across Bo's shoulders. Laughing kind of grin on his face, while Bo's smile is more controlled, more self-conscious in front of the camera. Makes him admire all over again how effortlessly cool Luke has always been. Oh, he'll worry about the future, figure that some kind of trap lurks around any given corner, but in the here and now, Luke's always got everything under control.

They've passed down a narrow hallway and into a room, where Luke flips on another light. Bedroom; Bo figures it must be the place he's going to stay the night, while Luke goes off to sleep wherever the master bedroom is. Sparse and small, this room's got nothing more than a queen bed covered by a tan quilt, a dresser and a closet. Luke goes digging in one of the drawers, hands him a pair of sweatpants. Out to the hall again, and Luke's pointing at the door diagonally across from them.

"Bathroom's there; you can use my toothbrush." Hard to say whether that's a generous offer or an unsubtle suggestion that Bo's got the kind of breath that could knock over a grizzly bear.

No time to get too worried about it, he's getting shoved off to get ready for bed. It's almost a relief to close the door behind him. A moment to himself, maybe to explore a little bit of this place that Luke lives in. The bathroom, however, reveals few secrets. Toilet, bathtub, sink. Tiny window looking out on the dark nothingness that they just came in out of. Nothing on the walls except the customary mirror, flanked by a small calendar with the occasional crossed off day. Bo takes it off the wall, flips back a few months, but there's no pattern to the markings, or at least none that he can decipher, so he hangs it back on the nail. Nothing much to see here, other than the mist of his own breath, floating in the air.

He reckons Luke sent him in here to get ready for bed, so he does. Winds up wearing gray sweat pants that barely come down past his knees, but they are soft and warm. Grabs the clothes he just stripped out of and wanders back out in to the hallway, follows the light back to where Luke's sitting on the bed in nothing more than shorts. It's not like there's any more heat in the house than there was outside, and yet the man looks perfectly comfortable in next to nothing, while Bo's still got the blanket slung across his shoulders to ward off the chill.

His cousin flips the top quilt open; Bo can only guess he must look as miserably cold as he feels. Weird to have Luke all but tucking him in, considering his cousin never even did that when Bo would have been little enough to appreciate it, but he's cold enough not to look a gift horse in the mouth. He drops his clothes wherever they fall, and crawls under the quilt.

By the time Bo's settled in, Luke's up and by the door, flicking off the light switch.

"I only got the one bed," he announces into the dark. "We're going to have to share." Funny how confessions come easiest to the man when there are no eyes to be met as he utters them.

There's the clank and rattle of a man going through evening bedtime rituals, then Luke's back. Pitch dark again, but there's the sound of footsteps, smell of soap, and then there's the dip on the other side of the bed.

"'Night, Bo," gets muttered, and it's clear that Luke's perched on the far edge of the bed, facing away from him.

For all that he got rushed off to bed, Bo's wide awake. Cold air is to blame, and just maybe he got enough sleep in the car, anyway. He's staring at the blackness above him, waiting for some errant bit of starlight to reveal contour and shape of anything around him. Thinking of the morning, and how Luke kept telling Mindy that Opportunity was his home, gave no indication that he was coming here only long enough to pack up and get back out. Working out how to broach the subject tomorrow, what tactic to take, when suddenly Luke rolls over. Close and warm, then a hand on Bo's arm, tiny tug there.

Bo turns toward him, hot breath of an open mouth, that close. Puts a hand on Luke's arm to feel the heat pulsing there, the heart slapping around in Luke's chest. That close, and Bo has to travel further than makes sense before he finds Luke's lips. Backing away, like they're not sure of this.

"It's all right," he whispers into the dark, not sure what he means by it. _It's all right to want me_, maybe. Or it could be a gut reaction to the way Luke's all but panting over there, so uncharacteristic of the athlete his cousin's always been.

Whatever his reasoning, Bo braces himself for the fallout, remembering that the last thing Luke's ever responded to is reassurance. It's always been his cousin's way to declare something acceptable or not, then justify or punish himself accordingly.

He gets surprised by Luke's hand at the back of his neck, and they're nose to nose, mouths open but not quite touching, not yet. Luke's there balanced between rationality and desire, trapped, afraid that tipping either way will bring on a fall the likes of which he can't survive. Bo reckons he can tilt those scales; tightens the grip he's got on Luke's arm, tugs him forward, and makes their lips meet. Quick kiss, still trying to back off to the safety of that fulcrum, but Bo follows him there. Two more short kisses, and Luke gives in.

Quick, like getting pulled around by the hand through the dark, that's what this thing with Luke is. Lips and hands, exploring curves and dips on each other's arms, then their backs. Luke's the one who finds Bo's chest, firm hands stroking the skin there. Makes Bo roll then, losing the kiss in the process, but he wins the high ground. Finds that wide, panting mouth again, sloppy kiss, but that doesn't matter, not with how his hand is finding its way down Luke's stomach. Jumping muscles there under his fingers.

Quick, like a pair of thirteen year olds stealing private moments in the dark of an old abandoned barn, that how this thing with Luke moves. Hand making a path down the curvature where stomach muscles suck away from the ticklish touch, down past the dip of belly button, under the elastic of Luke's shorts.

Kiss breaks there, an open mouthed gasp followed by that same vulnerable pant. _It's all right,_ he wants to repeat, but he's smart enough to let his hand do it for him. Wraps itself around Luke and for about two strokes, his cousin's just about paralyzed underneath him.

Two strokes and then its all movement again, a quick roll, and Luke's on top, kissing him hard and wanting, face hair rough against Bo's lips and chin, one big hand tangling in blond hair, tipping his head back. The other one's working at the drawstring on that pair of sweat pants Luke just about forced on him; seems like a waste of time to have put them on if the man's in such an all fired hurry to get them off. Big, warm hand closes around him and thought stops. Kisses, hot breath, color behind his eyelids. His ears register one last vulnerable gasp from Luke before all sound is lost to the whoosh in his own ears.

Luke's breath on his shoulder, at the base of his neck, tripping over itself in an attempt to become even again. That's the first thing he's aware of, even before he recognizes his own breathless sounds. Next comes the realization that Luke's thumb is stroking across his other shoulder, reassuring him, maybe. Or just checking that he's not broken, hasn't been killed by rough and tumble sex with Luke.

_It's all right_, stumbles through his mind again, but he stops it at his tongue. It's more than all right, really. Too fast, not in the least romantic, but it was good, it was—

Enough to make Luke yawn, then lift his head off Bo's shoulder. There's some wiggling next to him, then he gets offered Luke's shorts to clean himself up.

"Thanks," he mumbles out of politeness, or maybe just because his voice is getting tired of being silenced. Does his best to wipe away the mess, then drops the cloth over the edge of the bed. Kisses Luke's temple because it's there in front of his lips, then nudges as best he can with his semi-trapped shoulder. His cousin gets the hint and rolls away. Further than Bo might have liked, but that's all right. He just follows, slings an arm around Luke's waist and settles behind him. Listens to the perfectly even sound of Luke's breath, feels muscles relax under his arm.

"It's all right," he whispers when he's sure Luke's asleep. Still not entirely sure what he means by it, whether it's permission or comfort that he's offering. Then again, maybe they're just the same words he's heard said in Luke's voice all his life, some kind of a substitute for admitting to love.


	18. Old Married Couple

Old Married Couple

The question has never been, Luke realizes as he's picking his way barefoot up the walk from his own house to where the Jeep's parked on the grassy slope that serves as his driveway, whether or not he wants Bo. He knows the answer to that, has known it since the day his cousin chose a skinny little blonde girl over him. Diane, or that other girl, Cindy, that was a half of a conniving pair of twins, he can't ever seem to quite make up his mind on that, but either way, it's been years of knowing he wanted Bo.

What a mess the back of the Jeep got to be over the course of four days; still-damp clothes strewn across half-unpacked duffle bags, tent and sleeping bags poorly rolled and half jammed under the seat. Any stranger happening upon what Luke's sorting through now would think that the two men responsible for it hadn't been raised right and didn't have the first idea what they were doing when they went camping. But as to him and Bo, apparently they've forgotten more than most people have ever learned about camping. Used to be they'd spent days out in the wilderness and never had an incident, stayed out of trouble, and neither of them ever rolled over in the night and—

_You started it_ was the litany in his head from the moment he woke up naked, with that too hot arm leaving a line of sweat across his chest. _You started it_ followed after him as he slipped quietly out of the bed, found enough clothes to make himself decent, and slid into the kitchen for some morning coffee. But then he knew it would. Nagging thoughts had never been known to leave him alone after only a jab in the past. There's always been the right cross to follow, about how he'd told himself he was tired and would drop right off to sleep, and then the uppercut of a reminder that Bo seemed perfectly content to leave him to it.

There's the flip side of the battle to consider, too, the left hook reminding him how he'd been riding all day with the memory of Bo's morning kisses on his lips, the feel of that wet body slipping under his hands. And that the night before that was Bo's doing as well. Shoot, there's no way he could have rolled over in bed and found anything but his own hand ready to deal with what had been building inside of him, if Bo hadn't kissed him three years ago, out in the middle of an abandoned cornfield, with no one but the General as witness.

But all of that's immaterial, because last night he started it. And he started it because he wants Bo. End of line of thought.

Hunger brought him out here, digging through the contents of the Jeep in the early morning light. He couldn't have slept for more than a few hours, and with any luck, he's got a few more before Bo manages to drag himself out of bed. So while he came out here after their meager food supplies, he reckons he might as well unpack everything first. Barefoot trips back and forth across that flagstone path he laid out in the rough grass during his first year out here. It was some kind of homesickness that made him do it, he reckons now. A desire to make the cold, empty little cabin he was renting into something closer to the farmhouse he'd left behind. Little touches that made the place lived in and loved, instead of a shelter. It seemed important to him at the time, but in retrospect it was a pointless activity. The grass in Montana may be closer to hardy weed than Georgia soft, and the soil around it may be rocky and course, but he only had to look at either one of those things for a few months out of the year. The rest of the time all of it, including his carefully laid stonework, gets hidden under a crust of snow. But today the stones are there and there's nothing stronger than mist falling on him now. Fog, a rare treat up here in the Rockies, and something he has missed from back home.

Sleeping bags, tent, and duffels line the edge to the porch now, littered with items they've pulled out and never bothered to put away properly: a pair of Bo's jeans, the crunchy old towel that been part of his camping gear for years, a mess kit pan, Luke's jacket. Not so very different-looking from the back of Mindy's car yesterday, the clutter of family. For years Luke's kept a tidy home, and good manners dictate that he can't complain when Bo's mess starts to encroach. Got to be pleasant and welcoming to guests, but he doesn't have to like it, not when he can already see the mounds of dishes and dirty laundry his cousin is bound to create, then ignore.

Bags of food at last, when he's cleaned his way through the tailgate and finally makes it to the back seat. Peanut butter, it's what he came for and he considers just leaving the rest of the gear right where it lays on the porch so he can take the food inside and get after it. Rolling around in the bed with Bo then cleaning out the car has left him more than hungry; he's famished.

He settles for the intermediate, sitting on the porch swing he put up one summer during another bout of homesickness, and digging the peanut butter out of the bag at his feet. The mess kit knife's somewhere in the pile of junk that's just beyond his reach, so he doesn't bother with it, just opens up the jar and sticks a pinky in, licks it clean. Makes him feel like a little boy again, but the morning smells so fresh, getting washed clean by the rare high altitude humidity, that Luke reckons the childishness that's infecting him comes from the air around him.

Dip, lick, dip, lick, then the screen door screeches open.

"What a mess," his cousin comments, without bothering to notice how much of the disaster is actually of his own making. Yawns and pulls the blanket that's pretty much been his constant companion since they hit Montana tighter around his shoulders, then plops himself heavily onto the swing next to Luke. "Pretty country," he says, though there's little of it that can been seen yet. "How close is your nearest neighbor?"

Luke points with the same sticky pinky that has been digging in the peanut butter jar. "About a half mile over that ridge." Which is just starting to become visible on the far side of the Jeep.

Bo nods at that, then sacrifices one hand to the chill of the morning, reaching out to snake behind Luke's neck. Slight tug there, and it's too late to go resisting kisses now. He started it last night, and it's never really been a question that he wants Bo. So he accepts what's nothing more than a peck anyway, followed by, "Good morning." Bo lets him go, licks his lips, then purses them together to announce: "Peanut butter."

"It's all we got," he answers, starting to get his feet under him. The swing is comfortable to sit in, but he's always had a hard time getting back out, thanks to the way the seat slopes toward the back.

Impossible to get out of, actually, with the way his cousin's hand grabs at his belt. Fifteen years apart, and still Bo reckons that there's no part of Luke that's off limits to his hands.

"I didn't say I didn't like it," the grabby one says, pulling Luke back into the seat so he can kiss him again. Something more to it this time, less sweet, more spice.

"Bo," he warns, pulling back. "If you don't let me go, we ain't going to be eating nothing more than peanut butter for the rest of our lives." Until what's in the jar runs out, that is, after that they'll starve to death. But his cousin probably doesn't care about that, or at least he won't until his belly starts grumbling. Mostly the man's exactly like the boy always was – dazzled by what glows in front of him, never concerned about the potential darkness of the future. And in truth there's never been any reason for Bo to worry; he just moves from one shiny thing to the next, never having to confront anything gloomy. (Oh, but he has, he went through most of Jesse's illness alone, asking for help but never getting it. Guilty little thought that is, and Luke shakes his head to shove it aside.)

"You going hunting?" actually wants to be a serious question.

"Shopping, Bo," he corrects. "I got a mess of errands to run anyways, picking up the mail and paying bills since I been away, plus I got to get some oil for the Jeep." And other stops, but most of them involve stores and Luke's pretty sure Bo won't press him for details about which ones and why. In fact, it's a wonder the man hasn't already starved to death, considering how much he hates to shop, but then he's probably had one little lady after another taking care of him all his life.

"Too bad," is the casual answer. "If you was going hunting, I was gonna come with you. But shopping…"

Yeah, _no way_, Luke already knows how that sentence ends.

"You got to stay here and do some laundry anyways. You can't go wearing my clothes all the time." And with that half-baked job of packing Bo did, he's likely run out of undergarments already. "But ain't neither of us doing nothing until you help me clean up this mess." He puts down the peanut butter jar on the seat between them so he can use both hands to shove himself up to his feet. Hungry as Bo must be, he doesn't bother with reaching for the jar, just sticks out a hand to be helped up. Man must be genuinely sick of peanut butter.

But he's helpful enough, carrying his share of camping equipment inside and sorting through it. Luke points him to the hall closet, a small room that he figures was probably meant to be a tiny nursery or something, but without any expectation of having babies, Luke's always used it to store anything that's got to be kept inside, away from where raccoons and small rodents might get into it. A couple of years back he lined the space with shelves, making it even tighter, but it's very organized, and even a slob like Bo can figure out where the camping gear belongs. Of course there's too much of it now, what with that extra sleeping bag, too, but Luke does his best to ignore the fact that some of his stuff has to get moved in order to make room. It's just one of the perils of sharing space with Bo.

He goes off to grab a quick shower, leaving Bo to sorting out their dirty clothes. "Make sure you throw my shorts in," he says, gesturing toward the bedroom, where last night's drawers have got to be still laying by Bo's side of the bed. "And wait to turn it on until I get out of the shower." Because it was one thing to use up all the hot water in Hazzard. Bo doesn't know the meaning of a cold shower, never having had to deal with the frigid drip that comes out of Montana pipes if the water heater's not working right.

But it turns out his cousin has no intention of getting the laundry done in any kind of a hurry. Luke steps back out of the bathroom in jeans and a fresh shirt, feeling clean for the first time in days, to find Bo serving his best attempt at breakfast: the last of their bread, toasted up and slathered in the jelly they've been carrying since Tennessee. Stops what he's doing to stare at Luke for a minute.

"You clean up good," Bo tells him, and to prove he means it, he puts down the plate in his hand, and steps right up close. Right hand running through his wet hair, and Bo kisses him again. Serious kind of thing, and nothing Luke wants to get into this early in the day. Yesterday's good morning kisses left him wanting, no, needing for hours on end. So he backs out of the kiss, which only brings Bo's other hand up to his face, keeping him close. No kissing, just touching, and, "I like this," Bo says, running a thumb along the grain of his beard.

"I ain't never been able to make up my mind about it," Luke answers, grabbing hold of Bo's elbow. His intention might be to pull that hand away from his cheek, but the motion seems to stall somewhere around the time his thumb starts stroking the skin underneath it. "I usually get rid of it in summer."

"Don't," Bo says, same kind of thoughtless command he's always given. No consideration for what anyone else might want to do, if Bo's got a desire, he makes it plainly known.

"Breakfast," he says, because this needs to stop, right now. There never has been any question that he wants Bo, but not here, not in his kitchen with its empty refrigerator and bay windows that look over the road out there. Not that it sees a lot of traffic, but Luke does have neighbors, even if they are some distance away. "Is getting cold."

Snicker, close enough to be felt, then one more kiss, properly chaste. "Never was that warm to begin with." But Bo lets him go, lets him choose one of the plates of toast and shove it in front of his usual chair. Nods like he's taking note of Luke's habits, then chooses his own seat, to Luke's right. Could have sat across from him; it's a square table with four chairs, but it shouldn't surprise him that Bo still hasn't learned a damn thing about personal space. Pretty like he is, no one has ever really had the heart to push him away when he got too close.

"Make sure you separate the colors from the whites," he tells Bo between bites. He's got no idea whether Bo ever mastered the washing machine; all their young lives Daisy used a washboard and tub to take care of their laundry for them. For all Luke knows, some girl or other's been doing that same thing for Bo all his life.

His cousin just nods at that. "Make sure you pick up some buttermilk," is his reply.

Makes Luke wonder how in heck they could have turned into an old married couple over a few kisses and a quick hand job.


	19. Old Messages and Dirty Laundry

Old Messages and Dirty Laundry

Luke takes doing the laundry dang seriously. Before finally heading out for his errands, he showed Bo how to work the machine, and his dissertation on separating colors from whites was like chemistry class all over again, carrying some kind of dark threat that mixing the wrong two items would lead to violent explosion and shards of washing machine scattered all over the southwest corner of Montana. And then there's the part where Bo should run the machine once through with nothing in it, seeing as the water was turned off for a few weeks, and will likely leave rust stains all over his clothes. As if him and Luke haven't worn stained clothes for the better part of their lives.

And laundry's not the only thing Luke takes seriously. There's absolutely no doubt in Bo's mind that Luke's chewing over last night very carefully right about now, probably figuring how it was all a mistake and something he needs to fix. Cooking up some kind of a great plan for how to make it all right again, and Bo reckons it's just something his cousin needs to do. Oh, his younger self would have fought against it, would have dragged Luke off into some adventure that just about got them both killed, all in the name of keeping Luke from winding his way through all the reasons why the two of them shouldn't have ever touched each other below the belt, but he's too smart to bother with that now. There's nothing that can stop that brain from working overtime; Bo just reckons that a few kisses, a little touching, and some time spent just sharing the same space this morning were the best flavors he could throw into the stew Luke's making. A reminder that it wasn't just one horny little moment in a too-crowded bed, more like a lifetime of loving each other. So he'd held onto Luke until it was time to let him go, because that was all he could do.

For now there's nothing to do (well, there's laundry, but he'll get there in his own good time) except wait for his cousin to come home and announce how they can never do that again. Then Bo will have to begin the slow process and peeling away the layers of Luke's worries until, if he does a very good job of it and gets very lucky, he might just get a chance to touch Luke again. Some fine day, probably years from now.

The view out the kitchen windows has intrigued him ever since Luke stole a few glances that way as they were kissing. Not so much for its view of the road, but because now that the fog has lifted he can see the dirt and rock slope that slides down from the back of the house and into a green little grove of trees. The yaw and sway of the land is not so very different from where they grew up, but the colors, the severity of it all, a place too rugged to support anything but the hardiest greenery, that part's a surprise. Beautiful and achingly lonely, that's the landscape of Luke's life.

He's back in the bedroom, digging through Luke's drawers for something that will halfway fit him (because laundry can wait, and the two of them have shared clothes, on and off, for their whole lives), when he remembers that he meant to call Daisy this morning. She figures he's still in Hazzard as far as he knows; that was what they talked about last time he saw her. How she thought he should go off to Los Angeles after the love of his life, and he said he'd as soon stay in Hazzard (because Daisy didn't really know the first thing about Bo's love life, and he'd like to keep it that way, at least for now). She's probably already tried to reach him based on some deep-seated fear that he's terribly lonely. He appreciates the thought, or he would, if he were really in Hazzard. Here, in this space with Luke, he doesn't want any intrusions right now. Which is why he reckons he'd better call Daisy now, while Luke's out of the house.

So he pulls on a pair of his cousin's sweatpants, because there's no way he could fit into the man's jeans. Finds an approximately matching sweatshirt and tugs it over his head. Socks, well, those turn out to be Luke's too, what with the way Bo still hasn't done the laundry. The boots, at least are his own, and he tops it all off with a large flannel shirt he finds in Luke's closet. Oh, it's got to be the most ridiculous look he's ever worn, but it's comfortable and warm, and smells of Luke, so he'll be fine.

A phone. He knows his cousin's got one; he also knows it sounds tinny and hollow. Hours wasted to speaking with that disembodied Luke-voice that gave him useless advice about doing whatever made him happy. Okay, so they were just about the same words Luke has used all their lives, but coming from so far away, sounding less clear than even the choppy C.B. signals of hilly Hazzard, they were impossible to make sense of. Led to stupid decisions involving women and near-marriages. Makes him shudder to think about it.

Through the living room again, and really, before laundry, he needs to get around to finishing the unpacking. Eventually, later. Now he's on a mission to find the phone and if that means seeing more of Luke's house than he's gotten around to checking out yet, well, that's all the better.

Any sane man would keep their phone by the couch, but Luke's clearly not any sane man. Not in the kitchen either, and he's already been in the bedroom. One last pass through the living room, and there's some kind of a small space off to the side there. Open archway without a door, a converted old porch maybe. Once he gets close enough Bo can see that whatever it was meant to be, Luke's turned it into a small office. Closed laptop computer on the desk, and Bo can't imagine his cousin even knowing how to use such a thing, much less owning one. More natural accouterments next to it, pen and paper, and there, at last, is that horrid phone of Luke's. Not the cheap, tiny instrument Bo expects, this thing is one of those solid, heavy black telephones like everyone in Hazzard owned when they were kids. The sort of thing a man could use to brain an intruder, if he was of a mind to. He half expects Luke's to have a rotary, just like the one off the old farm kitchen used to, but it turns out to be push-button.

His fingers hesitate above it as he listens to the solid dial tone, then start pounding out that familiar set of numbers, ones he's dialed anytime he was outside of the range of the Hazzard switchboard. The old Duke farm, he's decided, is his first choice of calls to make.

He tried to get an answering machine installed there once, but his Uncle Jesse had just about slapped his hands at the notion_. I don't need no more infernal machines in my house, beeping and hollering at me to do this or take care of that. Seems a man can't get no peace no more, without some newfangled… _thing_ telling him how there's something else he ought to be doing._ There was more to the lecture, it had degenerated into some kind of a monologue about mules, which featured the long-ago-passed Maudine as a good example of the species, and him and Luke as the undesirable kind. In the end, Bo had opened a voicemail box at the farm as a compromise. His NASCAR team manager and overanxious boss, Dave, wanted unlimited access to one Bo Duke, and had tried to force a cell phone on him. With no interest in being quite that accessible, Bo had worked out what he reckoned was the next best thing. If he couldn't be reached at home, it would only be because he was visiting the elderly man that had raised him, up in Hazzard. Dave could leave messages in both places, if he wanted, and Bo would get back to him within the hour. Wasn't fun, always having to check in whenever he was away from either phone for more than an hour at a time, but it was better than some cell phone beeping at him from his belt.

He hadn't been sorry, two years later, when Dave had moved on to another team, and laid-back Joey took over. He hadn't disconnected the voicemail box at the farm, though. By then Uncle Jesse was gone, and it had turned into a central place where all three Duke kids could leave and retrieve messages from one another. And Bo reckons that if Daisy's on the warpath for him disappearing, he can find out by checking the voicemail first. At least that way he'll know just how much effort it's going to take before she'll say a civil word to him, how much charm he's going to have to pour on. Because despite what Hazzard's always said of him, Bo only has a limited ability to get himself out of trouble with a giant smile and a few flirtatious words, and he's got a feeling he should save back as much of that as he can for dealing with Luke when he gets home.

_You have five new messages_ the efficient female voice on the other end informs him, and he reckons it might be best if he forgets he ever had a cousin named Daisy. If she's called that many times, she's worked herself up into a state that only the likes of clobbering him over the head with a few kitchen utensils will resolve. _First message, sent Thursday at 5:23 PM_. Lord, she started calling the afternoon the two of them left.

"Hello Bo, this is Gabriela." Oh, hell no. The only thing worse than Daisy out to mother-hen him would be Gabby, with her precisely enunciated English words, reminding him of the stink of Los Angeles that her perfume never could quite blot out. "I just," little hesitation there, she's nibbling at her lip, no doubt. It's a cute mannerism, one of the things that made him think she just might fit into a Hazzard life after all. "I wanted to talk to you." Yeah, that's how they left things. Call me if you want to talk. Everything was a maybe when she got back on that bus for L.A. "Call me." Ugh. He'll have to deal with that later. For now he just presses six to save the message.

_Second message, sent Friday at 11:25 AM_. Bo reckons the voice mail woman is one of them skinny little things that never outgrew a little girl's body. Lonely wallflower, with nothing better to do than wait for a man to call in, so she can tell him how long he's been gone, how many calls he's missed.

"Hi Bo, this is Gabby. I'm still looking for you, darling." She tries to drawl it, tries to echo the way he said it to her up in the hills overlooking the lights and dirty streets of a city he didn't even like, after they watched Luke wander off with Anita. "I miss you." Bolder this time than last, direct like she got when she told him she loved the lines he spun. He can just about hear her winking at him, filtered through the flat-chested voicemail woman. "Call me." Never thought he'd mind a forward woman, but standing here with Luke's phone in his ear, all he can think of is that it's shameless. Hits the six again.

_Third message, sent Friday at 6:37 PM_, the boobless wonder informs him. It's enough that Gabby must have called him at the crack of dawn, her time. Now she's calling twice a day.

"Hey sugar!" Oops. Daisy. "It's your favorite cousin." Old joke, just as inappropriate as it ever was. "Call me."

_Fourth message, sent Sunday at 2:07 PM._

"Bo Duke, you best call me. Today, you understand?" Oh, he understands. Unfortunately, he won't be able to obey his cousin, what with how it's already Monday. His ears are going to ring for a week when he gets ahold of her. He presses seven to delete both of Daisy's messages; he doesn't need to listen to them twice to hear the echo of Aunt Lavinia in his head, prattling on about being responsible, not making his kinfolk worry about him.

_Fifth message, sent Monday at 10:38 AM_. Eastern time, of course. It's not quite 10:30 yet here, two hours behind the time zone Bo has lived in for his whole life.

"Querido. I miss you, please call me." Ten thirty-eight in Hazzard was eight thirty-eight here, and seven thirty-eight in Los Angeles. Oh, the girl's got it bad. She managed to hold off on calling him for the whole weekend, but started right back in, first thing Monday morning. She's singing some Latin-themed song for him, interspersed with English words about _love_ and _forever_ when he punches six to save the message and make it all stop. He hangs up the phone and lets his head drop into his hands. He's going to have to do something about that girl. Thing is, he doesn't have the first idea what.

Daisy, on the other hand, is largely manageable. Let her yell at him for being an insufferable clod-hopper, bend his head down for a good swatting next time he sees her, and she'll soften it all with a kiss and reassurances that he's still loved. He picks up the handset again and calls her.

"Luke!" is the way she answers the phone. "I wasn't expecting to hear from you, sugar!" Of course, she's got caller ID, and he's just dialed out to her from their cousin's phone. "I was waiting to hear from that cotton-picking cousin of ours, Bo."

"Hey sweetheart," he twitters back, cheerfully.

"Bo Duke," she snaps. "What in the _world_ are you doing calling me from _Luke's _phone?"

"Well, it's nice to talk to you, too," he answers, smile spreading across his face. Oh, Daisy doesn't like surprises, not in the least. Especially when they end up catching her in a less than appealing light.

"Don't you go telling me how nice it is to talk to me. You just tell me what," there's a pause there as her brain catches up to her mouth. It takes everything in him not to giggle at her expense. "What you're doing in Montana. Ain't you got no sense at all?"

That's an odd notion, that going off to visit their cousin shows a lack of sense.

"I got plenty of sense," he mumbles, leaves it at that. She's got to spout off, and it's no real use to argue against her.

He needs to talk to Luke about getting a cordless phone. Daisy's lectures are endless and highly detailed. She'll spell out for him not only the precise nature of his current infraction, but then she'll tie it back to previous times that he did something vaguely related. By the end, which is likely to come along a few hours from now, it will all be proven to go back to his very first crime, as far is she is concerned, and one he doesn't even remember (but Luke does, oh Luke's memories go all the way back as far as having parents): apparently, when he was all of three or so, he cut off one of her pony tails. Short hair for the few months it took to grow back, and all of life's miseries are the direct result of that.

Best way to deal with the tirade is to pace, but the cord on this phone is short, tangled. So he leans back in the old wooden chair here, props his feet up on the equally aged edge of the desk. Distracts himself by really looking around this room for the first time. Same rustic look as the rest of the house, just the finished side of logs for walls. Bookshelf behind him and that right there might be the only part of his cousin's house that is anything but perfectly tidy. Not that it even approaches the clutter of Daisy's place or the comfortable, lived-in (_pigsty_, or so more than one lovely female has said to him) feel of Bo's apartment. But it's got casually stacked books on it that look like a fascinating read; apparently they're reference materials, the codes and standards of Luke's trade. Then there are the atlases, some lying open, and reams of paper maps. Bo picks one up, small one. Unfolds it, but it makes no sense at all. Just concentric circles, really, as far as he can figure. He'd put it back if he could figure out how to fold it. Instead he drops it on the desk.

"Daisy," he interrupts somewhere around the time she's gotten to his lack of concern for others as represented by the death of one little, yellow Plymouth Roadrunner, and that one wasn't even his fault. It was _Daisy's_ brakes that failed him after all, nearly killing both him and Luke. Never did take care of a car all the way, his female cousin didn't. Loved the washing and waxing and only halfway ever let him or Luke look under her hood. "He was lonely. Luke was. That's why I came out here with him."

There's an explosive noise of exasperated breath on the other side of the line. Whether it's for what he said or the fact that Bo had the gall to disrupt her well-supported thesis on what a fool he is, he's not sure.

"Luke ain't never been," oh Daisy's about to show her ignorance on their oldest cousin, always taking him at face value. Luke insists he's not lonely; therefore he's not. "Anything he don't want to be. If he's lonely, it's only because he don't want no one close to him." Well, it turns out Daisy's been halfway paying attention in their lifelong survival course of figuring out Luke after all. "If you was worried about someone being lonely, you should worry about that sweet friend of yours, Gabriela. She's looking for you, you know."

He sits up properly and sticks an elbow on the old desk in front of him for the sole purpose of resting his head in his hand. "She called you?"

"Of course she did. Couldn't reach you at the farm, so she tried your number in Atlanta. When that didn't work, she called me. I told her I'd track you down. Should have known that I didn't have to look no further than Luke."

"Didn't have to look no further than…" No that's not what he wants to say. He wants to demand how Gabby got Daisy's number at all, but it's only obvious that the two of them must have traded contact information somewhere along the line. Shoot, they've probably already spent hours on the phone planning a wedding that Bo's got no intentions of being any part of. "If she calls again, just—"

"Oh no you don't Bo Duke. I ain't breaking no sweet girl's heart for you. You got something to say to her, you say it yourself."

"I ain't," deep breath, he takes his head out of his hand, opens his eyes. Luke's house, and there's another small photo of the two of them there, on the back corner of the desk. Beautiful, tiny, wood frame that he would bet Luke whittled himself. Color photo this time, of the two of them and the just-finished General. So young. Not a care in the world. No girls. Oh, there were plenty of girls, he needs to stop lying to himself. Just none of them mattered, none of them expected anything more than one exciting night at a time. "I ain't gonna ask you to break her heart. Just tell her I'll call her sometime. Not tomorrow or nothing, but soon."

"Bo Duke." He's starting to feel like that little kid on the comic pages of the Hazzard Gazette, the one with the crooked stripe on his shirt. Just like Charlie Brown, he keeps hearing his full name said, over and over. "Don't you do this again. You do this over and over, leaving some sweet girl behind to go chasing off after Luke." His cousin's smarter than she knows. "It was all right when you was younger, but if you ain't careful you're going to run out of girls to do this to, and then it ain't going to have no one but Luke left." He should be so lucky.

She's back to telling him how it is, all the wrong steps he's taken since he first learned how to walk. It's the kind of honesty he can only expect from family, and he loves her for it. Which is why he lets her go on as long as she needs to. He's not listening anyway, he's squinting out the window at what he assumes is Luke's back yard. Hard to know, in this rugged land that is more rock than grass and lacks the fences that line Hazzard properties, where the boundaries are to this piece of land that Luke's cabin is situated on.

"Are you listening to me?"

He's a Duke, compelled to honesty. "No Daisy, I ain't. I'm sorry. I'll call you again another day, okay?"

She'd like to strangle him, maybe, take those claws of hers and dig them into his skin until he agrees to call Gabby right away and declare his undying love for her. But—

"All right, but this discussion ain't over." She's going to let him off the hook.

"I know it ain't," is just more Duke honesty, passing between them. "I love you, Daisy," is how he's going to put it to a stop for now.

"I love you, too. And Luke, tell him I love him, too."

Well, good luck with that. Bo reckons she'd better tell him herself, seeing how he's got no intentions of saying the L-word to Luke for awhile. They've loved each other all their lives, but by now it's such a powerful feeling, it's like dynamite arrows. Got to let go of them carefully or they could explode right back in his face.

Finally, he's able to peel the phone away from the sore cartilage of his ear. He's so exhausted from that little encounter that he'd like to go right on back to Luke's bed and catch himself a quick nap, but he reckons its best if he's conscious when Luke gets home. As wound up as his cousin's bound to be, Bo's going to need all of his energy to calm him down. He thinks.

So he makes his way back to the bathroom for a quick and chilly shower, then finally finds enough clothes to throw in the wash for the first load. He doesn't sort them, doesn't bother with running an empty load first, like Luke told him to. The fight they're going to have over that won't hold a candle to the other struggles that are likely to happen between them today, most likely starting with Luke trying to send him straight back to Hazzard. He's got no intentions of going that far, but figures, if his cousin really needs it, he'll offer the compromise of sleeping on the couch until Luke's over the panic of what happened between them last night.

Soon as the clothes are churning around in that clunky old washer of Luke's, Bo heads outside. Fresh air, it's always been the Duke boys' cure for what ails them. The threat of prison in the guise of a Boss Hogg scam? No problem a night of camping couldn't solve. Besides, he needs a better look at this spread of Luke's.

The rise next to the driveway is not as impressive as it looked in the morning mist. Just a rocky little lump between here and there, and Bo reckons that if he climbed it, he'd see Luke's closest neighbor. But he's not in search of company.

Funny blue to the sky, reminds him of all those cowboy movies from his childhood. He always figured the color was either faulty on the original film or, more likely, that the projector in the Hazzard Theater was too cheap to show things right. But out here now, there's that same, powder-blue color, just as intense, but not half as beautiful as Luke's eyes. Wispy clouds, and it's all so bright, reflecting off the rocky soil at his feet.

Bo makes his way around the cabin, and there's the view he saw this morning. Steep slope here, and at the bottom, on the far side of some old railroad tracks, is what he figures to be a creek, running through the one patch of solid green he can see in all the miles around him. Violent extremes, that's this place, and it fits Luke perfectly.

Some day after Luke calms down but before they leave this place, he wants to wander this country with Luke. A hike at least, but hunting would be better. It's something he learned when he was just a boy, that it's not really possible to understand the beauty of a place until you've seen it from the viewpoint of its natural inhabitants, the animals.

The thought makes him take a few steps back to something he's been ignoring up until now, because it's comparatively dull: the shed at the top of the driveway. He heads back up there and opens the door for a quick look around. He hasn't gotten far when he hears the Jeep behind him. He takes himself a few steadying breaths, before turning around to watch Luke climb out the door and walk toward him. He reckons it's about to start right now, Luke's steady shove, pushing Bo back out of his life, back across the continental divide where he can be safely forgotten. Braces himself, and watches Luke's face.

The look there isn't exactly what Bo expects. Determination maybe, frustration, anger at being tricked into wanting him last night, that's what he's been working himself up to deal with all morning. What's really there in Luke's eyes is something closer to worry, some kind of hidden pain.

"You all right?" Bo asks.


	20. Luke's Pups

Luke's Pups

"You all right?"

Bo's got to be kidding. Man's been caught poking through the shed, wearing the oddest combination of borrowed clothes Luke has ever seen, guilt of one kind or another just painted across his face, and he's got the gall to ask if _Luke's_ all right.

"Fine," he answers, and it's true. Mostly, and the part of it that's not completely factual isn't anything to do with Bo, really.

Obviously in the hours that Luke's been gone, Bo got up to just about nothing at all. Some cousins never grew up, and that's not a big surprise.

"Come on, help me get the groceries into the house, so's I can see how much of a mess you've made already." If that combination of cowboy boots and too-short sweats is any indication, he's going to find dirty laundry everywhere, and not a stitch of it in the washing machine. Or, worse, all of it's in the machine, which is currently gurgling soapy water all over his hardwood floors.

Bo snorts dutifully, gives him an affronted look, but underneath the attempt at a sneer there's still that worry, the concern that made him ask if Luke's all right.

Like going out for a few groceries could harm him in some way.

It wasn't the groceries, anyway. It was before the buttermilk, and after stopping down at the phone company to pay the bill. Next to last stop of the morning, stupid thing to do, really. Most everything he needed was within the five block grid of town, but he'd been at the post office, the hardware store, the camping goods store (to replace that tent pole before he forgot about it and found himself out in the middle of nowhere with no way to compensate for what got damaged), then he even made a quick trip over to the dry goods store to get Bo some underwear, because he reckoned that if he didn't, sooner or later they'd end up sharing. Only one more thing to do, groceries, and instead of just going there, he'd taken himself one town over, to Anaconda, instead. Off the smooth pavement of Commercial Avenue and across the railroad tracks, around the familiar potholes of the mostly-dirt parking lot, leaving his Jeep in the same spot he used most days. Up the cracked concrete stairs, and he was only partway through the glass door there when it started up.

"Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl…"

"Conklin," he said, because it never had been funny or even appropriate for the kid to joke around with him that way. Grabbed the youngster behind his neck and had him in a half-nelson before he even had half a chance to fight back. Up against the wall, then Luke's knuckles rubbing through his hair and into his head. Struggle underneath him, but it was half-hearted. Conklin's strength always had been in his upper body anyway, and that part of him was mostly mashed into the wall. Static electricity dancing under Luke's hand as the length of the kid's straight hair picked up the charge and, "Give?" Luke asked him.

But it was too late, the call of "Duke's here" was making its way through the small collection of rooms at the front office, until there were bodies all around him, his team engaged in a group wrestling match, for all the world like a set of wolf pups greeting a parent, home from the hunt. He felt the disparate strengths of their bodies, Smitty close up against him and shoving at his shoulder, Wiggins prying at his arm in an attempt to free Conklin, still squirming in his grip, Marks nothing more than a hand here and there, too grown up for this ritual, entering what would be his third season. He let the game go on for a full minute, because the boys needed it, then called a halt with a quick whistle between his teeth. Oh, it didn't settle right away, took a few seconds to come down to relative calm after the all-out brawl it had been, but his boys knew better. A second whistle and they were all on their best behavior.

"How was Georgia?" Smitty asked, made Luke smirk at him. This kid, for all that he was the youngest of the bunch, scrawniest and least coordinated, had the most potential. This kid was all heart.

"It was fine," he answered, hoping that would be enough to say, that the conversation wouldn't degenerate into discussions of side-trips to Los Angeles, of old flames lost and found. "How's the wife?" is the distraction he chooses to make sure the discussion goes his way. "Michelle," he adds, just to make clear that he remembers the important details of the kid's life. Because he does, he knows all of them almost like he raised them himself. Oh sure, their mothers took care of the first twenty years or so, but from there they became Luke's responsibility, and to keep them alive and safe, he'd learned everything about each of them; weaknesses, strengths, fears. They were about as dysfunctional as it got, but for the last few years, since he took the promotion to trainer, they'd been the closest thing he had to family.

"Duke," Rico called, and it was odd how, for being his family and all, they never much called him by his given name. Then again, this has been the first place in his life where he was the only Duke in town, so that right there is a novelty that never wore off. "Come back here and see me."

"Yes, sir," he hollered back, trying to shed himself of his pups, but he should have known they'd stick close. He'd been away from them too long, left them worrying through the slow season. So when he got to the doorway of the older man's office in the room at the back, he was fully aware of the tail he was dragging behind him.

"You ready to sign that contract now?" Damn it, Rico wasn't supposed to ask him that first. There was supposed to be small talk and a chance to get a closed door between the two of them and the boys on Luke's team before that came up.

Luke shook his head, but there wasn't anything else he could do. "Not yet," he answered.

Shifting behind him, grumblings and noises, which he turned to quiet with just a look. Marks, of course, caught his eye, quiet little smirk there under those dark eyebrows. _I knew you'd walk away from us_, it says. _Some day_. And behind that, in those dark brown eyes that have always watched him carefully, glowed the ambition: _now it's my turn_.

"Give us a minute," Luke said to him. Marks might not have been the easiest, always challenging and bucking for improved rank, but he had always been the best qualified, and Luke reckoned that in time he really would take over a more senior position. And even now, as the kid plotted his future, he could be counted on to lead the others away. Luke stepped into Rico Martinez's office and helped himself to a seat.

"Duke," the older man said, leaning forward across his own desk in some kind of a half-hearted attempt to get closer to him. Didn't work; there was that belly holding him back. Pictures of the man from only a decade ago showed a lean firefighter, but it seemed that a few years behind a desk could make a mess of a man's body. As to the lack of hair on the man's head, as far as Luke knew, it had always been that way. "They're crazy about you."

First shot, and already it was below the belt. "I know that," he agreed.

"You're the best trainer and team leader I've ever had," came the second hit, but that one wasn't so powerful. It wasn't like Rico had been in the Regional Supervisor position for more than half a dozen years anyway. He'd only seen his way through two leaders before Luke.

"Thank you," he answered. It was a compliment after all, even if it was about to be used against him in a minute here.

"You're already GS-11," was the reminder that followed. "I can't raise you another grade." Not without a promotion, and the only place to go would be to replace Rico in his job. Luke had no interest whatsoever in that.

"It ain't that," Luke informed him. "You know it ain't." He'd never held a contract over anyone's head for more money; it wasn't the way Dukes operated. "I just need more time to think, is all."

Rico nodded. "You take all the time you need," he agreed, but Luke knew better. "But you know, of course, that if you don't sign by the end of the month, you're out for this season. Not I thing I can do for you after the thirtieth."

Yeah, Luke knew that. Not even a full two weeks, and they'd go back into training mode. If he signed up again. If not, there'd be a transfer from somewhere, someone with a few more years on him than Marks, to take over Luke's place.

He'd had some vague plan to go ahead and give notice today, and let Rico start making the calls he'd need to. But that was before all his pups greeted him at the door, tails wagging, yipping to be noticed first. Even Marks had been a part of the pack today.

"I got to go," Luke said to the man. "I got a houseguest."

Rico nodded and sat back in his chair. "All right. See you soon." And that right there was nothing more than a sneaky little jab at his conscience. _Make up your mind._

It was quiet when he stepped back toward the front offices where he knew his boys would be lounging. No happy pups to greet him this time, just quiet, questioning stares.

"I ain't made up my mind yet," he told them. Only fair to be honest. "When I do, you'll be the first to know." Before Rico, even, because his real loyalty had never been to the men above him. He'd learned that lesson long ago, on another continent with a different set of brass. The men beside and below him, those mattered most. Those above were to be obeyed, but they'd be fine, they'd survive any fight, because they'd be nowhere near the front lines. The ones to the right and the left, struggling alongside him, those were the ones to be loyal to.

"What's there to be making up your mind about?" Smitty asked, got himself snorted at by Marks who probably figured he knew everything. Imagine if the boy actually had half a clue what it was that could pull Luke away from here. _I've been rolling around in the bed with my cousin. No, not the girl – the other one. The pretty one. Yeah, Marks, I get it on with another man._

"Family," he said instead. "Back home."

His pups, the youngest ones, nodded at that. They remembered well enough what leaving family behind was like.

"I got to head out now," he added. "My cousin's back at my place right now."

"You should bring her by," Wiggins suggested, silly little smile and flushed skin under all those freckles.

"Not that one," Luke informed him. "And she'd smack you upside your head for what you're thinking right now." Oh, they'd seen pictures, old ones that Luke kept in his wallet, snapshots taken when the whole bunch of Duke cousins wasn't any older then the boys in front of him now. "She's old enough to be your mother, anyway." And she'd smack Luke upside his head for saying that, even if it's pretty close to being true. "My other cousin, Bo, is here."

"The NASCAR driver?" Even Marks was relatively impressed by that one. Figured, everyone that'd ever given Luke a hard time in life had been absolutely crazy about Bo.

"Yeah, him," Luke affirmed.

"You should bring him by," Smitty suggested, and Luke had to figure the kid was genuine about it. He wouldn't want to meet the famous Bo Duke so much as the man that Luke grew up with. And the two of them weren't that different, really. Trade out white coveralls emblazoned with sponsors' names for a green one with the Forest Service insignia over the heart, and you'd pretty much find the same personality underneath. Sort of.

"Maybe I will," he said, but there was no way in hell he'd do it. The decision in front of him was hard enough without getting all the players in one place for a side-by-side comparison.

He'd managed to get himself out the front door and back into his Jeep, almost home before that voice nagged in his head: _don't forget the buttermilk_. Awful stuff, but Bo always loved it. Besides, it was only one of the many groceries they needed.

And now that buttermilk's sitting back there in the back seat, probably just about getting ready to turn that one more notch until it's just plain rotten milk.

"Quit looking at me like that," he tells Bo, who hasn't moved yet from where he's standing, halfway in the shed, like it might just be dangerous to come out. "I'm fine and you're hungry, so let's get them groceries inside."


	21. Impossible

Impossible

The thing of it is, Luke's impossible. Sorting through clothes with a single-minded attention to detail that would make Daisy's head spin, stacking food into his pantry in something close to alphabetical order, unpacking what Bo hasn't gotten to yet with frightening efficiency. And all but tucking Bo away into a closet with his clothes. _This is how you will fit into my life, cousin; you will fold down to tidy squares and stay tucked away until I have a use for you._

It's not that bad, actually. It's just Luke being Luke, controlling what he can and hoping that those things that cannot be carefully ordered will not derail him in the end. It's nothing personal, and Bo knows that. Then again, that might just be the biggest problem. Seems like, whether it's a fight or a kiss, _something_ between the two of them ought to be personal right now.

But Luke is the same annoying paradox he's always been; those times when Bo most wants to touch him, when Luke could most use a friendly hand, are the times it's most dangerous to be close. Once, when he was younger and Uncle Jesse – with his insistence on civility as enforced by the threat of whippings – was never far away, he would have asked his cousin what was eating at him. Today he reckons he'd do better to wait it out, to let whatever this mood of Luke's is reveal itself before he tries to deal with it.

In the meanwhile, he sets to making lunch. Oh, it means disordering Luke's fine pantry, but it'll be worth it. Haven't either of them had a reasonable meal in days, aside from the food all but forced on them by Mindy Collins, and he's perfectly glad to forget all about that.

"What're you after?" gets groused behind him as he rifles through the wood panel cabinets in Luke's kitchen. It's a beautiful room, and Bo can understand the urge to keep it that way.

But a pristine kitchen would yield only more peanut butter and jelly, and Bo is not willing to face that particularly bleak option.

"You hungry?" he asks instead of bothering to answer his cousin. Daisy would have hummed those words, might have playfully swatted a spatula at Luke's head and kissed his cheek before sending him away. Bo lacks her feminine charms. He stands there, hands on hips and waits for an answer.

"I could eat," Luke allows, and that's enough for Bo.

"Then you just go back to your laundry or cleaning up, or whatever it was you was doing, and leave me to it. If you want a decent meal, that is."

Luke's right eyebrow raises at that, followed by the corner of his mouth. It's the best damn job of calling him a temperamental girl that Luke could have done, and he didn't even bother to open his mouth.

And in truth, it might have been wiser to just ask Luke if he even owns spices, and if so, where he keeps them. Bo's kitchen's not half this spacious, and he's always kept it pretty similar to the way they all lived in the old farmhouse. But this cabin's got an honest-to-goodness pantry, and Lord knows where, in all that space, Luke would think to put the garlic powder. Shoot, knowing Luke, he grows his own garlic somewhere out in the rocky hills here, and wouldn't be caught dead with the pre-dried and ground version of the stuff in his house.

He's about to have to give in and chase his cousin down to the bedroom – or the bath, whatever it might be that the man is reordering now – when he finally finds the line of tiny bags. Oregano, marjoram, cinnamon, tarragon, garlic. Should have figured Luke would be subtle, even in his seasonings. Bo's spice rack is out in the open, with large plastic and glass jars of the powders and grains, and if Luke showed up in his kitchen tomorrow, there'd be no searching for anything. Everything here is just as hidden as whatever's put Luke into this quiet little mood.

Eventually, after he's found all the ingredients he needs, then measured, mixed and prepared them, somewhere around the time that the frying chicken is in the oven smelling every bit as good as anything their female cousin has ever made, Luke reemerges from wherever he's been hiding. All but sniffing the air and drooling, which just goes to show that if Bo makes a good woman, Luke is every bit the southern man of their youth, arriving just in time for the eating.

"Oh sure," Bo announces. "Now I get some respect."

Luke shakes his head. "It ain't respect, Bo. It's me wondering where Daisy's hiding, because I know you ain't made something that smells that good."

"You just be careful," he warns, but there's that same little half-smile on Luke's face, a relaxed look like he hasn't seen a lot of since they last shared a bedroom, some fifteen years ago. "Or you might never find out if it tastes as good as it smells."

Luke's not concerned in the least; he just starts digging out some dishes to set the table. Funny how they went through most of their lives with barely enough to share amongst four of them, whether it was meals or plates to put them on, but now, living in three different houses, the Duke cousins have more than enough for families of their own. If any of them had ever gotten around to having any.

"Put one of them hot pad things down on the table," or whatever Luke uses to protect the wood against getting burned by pots coming straight out of the oven. "Because the chicken's ready."

"Bo!" he gets admonished, "just put it on the stove for a minute, would you?" And Luke's at his side in a beat or two, fishing the chicken pieces out with a fork and putting them on some kind of a serving plate. Bo reckons he could have done that himself, if he'd thought of it. Used to be that Daisy served her fried chicken in a bowl that they passed around the table, but that was years ago when they all lived together. Now it's come to the point that sometimes Bo doesn't bother with a plate to eat off of, just stands over the sink and lets errant bits of food fall where they may. Leave it to Luke to even _have_ a serving plate after all these years of living alone.

The meal, however little Luke might approve of Bo's serving methods, is apparently acceptable. Maybe even good, if the way his cousin's devouring it is any indication. So much for all that careful attention to manners and proper dining etiquette.

"Where," Luke manages, somewhere between a drumstick and a breast. "Did you learn to cook like that? I know you ain't never let Daisy teach you a dang thing about the kitchen."

True enough, but then again, that girl was always ridiculously possessive of her utensils anyway, and only ever let Jesse touch them because they'd been his for a whole generation before she took them over.

"This right here I learned from Heather. She was…" but Luke already knows this. "I dated her sometime back." Luke already knows and still it's awkward in the telling. He doesn't want to talk about old lovers with Luke anymore. All those girls were just bookmarks, holding his place here or there until he could find what he really wanted. Thin little slips of things that left him feeling lonelier when they were there than after they left him.

"Must've been quite the woman to teach you how to cook." It's strained, Luke trying to keep light those heavy, white elephants between them.

"She wasn't nothing so special," Bo answers, and tacitly agrees to drop it. Duke men hardly need words between them anyway.

Afterward, Bo sticks close as Luke washes their dishes.

"Ain't you got nothing better to do?" he gets asked, but it's hard to take a man that's elbow deep in bubbles seriously.

Besides, "Nope," is only the truth.

Big sigh, then his cousin opens the knee-high cabinet under the sink.

"Grab that towel there and start drying, then."

It's like childhood all over again, working elbow to elbow, mostly watching the way Luke scrubs at each and every corner of each and every dish while Bo just runs his cloth lightly over the surface. Used to be he had a theory about how drying them thoroughly left streaks, whereas a light touch left them spot-free, but that was never anything more than an answer back to Luke's grousing about how he wasn't hardly doing nothing at all. If his cousin has any complaints about Bo's drying skills now, he just keeps them to himself.

When the dishes are done, they're two Duke boys at a loss. Luke's there in his own kitchen, hands on hips and just calculating what very important tidying task they have yet to get up to when Bo suggests a walk.

"We got clothes in the washer, Bo," is Luke's grumbling attempt at dismissal. Second load of the day; first one went through without any signs of rust stains, and if Luke mentioned his shorts turning a light blue for having been washed with so many pairs of jeans, the words lacked the conviction of a real complaint.

"And if they finish before we get back, they can sit in there for a few minutes. I ain't suggesting a hike, I just want to see the land. With you," he adds, in case the clever man to his left gets it into his head to tell Bo to just go on his own. "So's you can keep me from getting shot by your neighbors." Luke's snort at that isn't easily translated. Could mean that Bo's a fool for the suggestion that accidental trespass could be risky in these parts, or it might just be that Luke thinks Bo getting shot is genuinely amusing. "Come on," he finishes, wishes that for once his cousin wouldn't be so distant when he's chewing something over, wishes he could get up close, nose-to-nose, and charm himself a smile out of the man.

"Not until you get dressed in decent clothes. I'd shoot you myself for walking out there looking like that, if I had a gun."

"They're your clothes," he reminds his cousin, but he's just as glad to get into jeans that make all the way down to his ankles. He's not as happy about getting out of Luke's sweatshirt, which was warmer then his own button down shirt that it gets traded for, but with Luke's big old flannel shirt overtop of it all, he's still reasonably warm. He comes back to the front of the house dressed that way and gets another head-shaking smirk from Luke.

"It smells like you." The top shirt does. "I like it." Honesty. For all that Dukes are compelled to it, Luke never has figured out how to deal with it in quiet moments like this. For his cousin, the truth has most often been shouted in the middle of an argument, whether it was with Uncle Jesse over nights he never made it home, or the time he told Bo exactly what he thought of Diane. Honest words now, when they're not yelling at each other, make Luke turn away in embarrassment.

It marks the first time of this quiet hour that they spend together that Bo wants to take hold of his cousin's hand, or maybe throw an arm across his shoulders and keep him close like he did when they were little more than kids. But it's not the last; the urge strikes him again when his cousin tells him to watch himself after the dirt under his boot gives way while he's climbing the ridge. Oh, it's nothing serious, he doesn't even lose his balance and Luke doesn't have to reach out a hand to steady him, but that same quiet _watch yourself_ that he's heard all his life makes him want to reciprocate somehow, to be a comforting presence to his cousin, if only Luke would let him. And that desire stays with him through the rocky descent down to the patch of green Bo has pointed out wanting to explore.

"Willow Creek," Luke introduces, when they get close enough. "Nothing like the one back home. That right there is about the heaviest it ever flows, during the spring snowmelt."

It's not as pointless a little stream as Luke seems to think. Bo sits in the soft grass at the bank and looks in to see all the tiny life there, from lichens on the stones to the little minnows that shiver their way through icy waters. It may not be deep or wide, but here in this land too rugged to support much, this here is the closest thing to home.

Luke squats next to him, restless, but tolerating this moment of quiet. "I like it here, too," he says.

Then he's on his feet again, and time's up. Yeah, the man's probably spent as many minutes as he can stand away from whatever organizing he feels needs to be done now. Bo starts pushing himself upright, too.

"You can stay a while if you want to," Luke offers. "Only takes one of us to do the laundry."

Oh, no, there will be none of that. Luke up there by himself working out how whatever's on his mind is the biggest and best reason Bo's got to go back east now and leave him behind. And then, to firmly root the notion into the gnarled old twists of logic that run through that overworked brain of Luke's, his cousin will make the tremendous sacrifice of doing all the laundry, just to prove that he's still taking care of Bo, even as he's cutting him free with a surgeon's precision.

"I'm coming with you."

He does his best to stick close to Luke for the rest of the day. Precarious line to walk between being near and crowding the man, especially when his cousin's idea of personal space is about twice the size of any regular human being's. But he manages to revolve around that flaming ball without ever quite getting burned, through those activities his cousin seems to perform in lieu of chores, then on through dinner. No television, and Luke seems antsy to get on his computer for a little while, so Bo leaves him to it. Heads out to sit on the porch for a while, because the stars are still his favorite thing to watch each night, and there appear to be more of them here than he has seen since they used to run moonshine by the light of those tiny points in the sky. Besides, if he's out here, it's not like his cousin can go sneaking off without him knowing.

Not that Luke would – if the man wanted to get away from Bo for the night, he'd just walk right on past him to the Jeep, get in it and go. Oh, there might be a fistfight somewhere about the halfway point of the driveway, but if Luke wanted to go, he'd be gone. No sneaking required.

Clearly he doesn't, and not only that, he apparently has no desire to let Bo go disappearing either. After a while, Luke's there, at the screen door and calling to him.

"Ain't you cold?"

Freezing.

"Yeah," he admits. "It's pretty out here, but dang cold."

Luke holds the door open for him. "Come on in then, and let's get to bed."

It's a good thing he's as tired as he is, from long days of driving and short nights of sleep, or he'd be giving his cousin what-for over declaring bedtime and lights-out. And odds are that fight'll still happen, but he pushes it off until tomorrow night. He follows Luke in and watches as his cousin closes and locks his door. Interesting; it's more desolate on this plot of land than it ever was in Hazzard, the antithesis of Bo's city apartment, and yet somehow the safe feeling of a small town has not followed Luke here. Doors never got locked back at home, regardless of the fact that the old Duke homestead got broken into many times. All right, so often enough it was the law of Hazzard doing the breaking, but Bo would bet this cabin's never been illegally entered, even by friendly enemies, and still Luke's locking up. Must be a habit learned by living alone.

Their bedtime routines are the same kind of staggered that they were last night, with Bo getting ready first. At least, if he winds up in his own sweatpants when he might have preferred Luke's, he gets the trade off of being able to use his own toothbrush.

And when they're both washed, changed and lying in the pitch black of the bedroom, there's that unrested quality to his cousin again. Not tossing and turning, that's not Luke's subtle style. Just a sort of motionless anxiety, translated across the telegraph wires or their minds.

"Luke," _quit thinking so much_, or _tell me about it_, maybe just _settle down_, could be what he plans to say. Never gets that far because the name alone brings his cousin to him, over him, on him. No hesitance tonight, no vulnerable breathing, just lips on his, preventing perfectly logical words from escaping.

And it shouldn't be surprising really, that the man would choose this method of escape from his thoughts; used to be he fought through nights that followed on days like this. Boar's Nest brawls and then the finishing touch of time spent with girls under the stars on the banks of Hazzard pond.

He should put a stop to this, protest against what's happening here. Should, but he's not going to, not with the way his body's already arching up against the one above his, not with the way his hands are exploring parts that firm body that he's never gotten around to touching before in all the years they lived together, not with the way Luke's kisses have already taken him away from rationality. Not with the way he wants this so much more than he wants a stupid conversation about how they shouldn't, not with how he wants this more than he's wanted anything, ever.

The thing of it is, Luke's impossible.


	22. Twitters and Tingles

Twitters and Tingles

There exists the remote possibility that Bo actually wants to talk to him. There are vocalizations here and there, the kind of thing that might be attempts at words. Then again most of those sounds seem to be agreeing with the nothing at all that Luke's saying, so that's just fine. He doesn't want to talk about it anyway.

Doesn't want to discuss how he had no intentions of doing this, how he knows better than to behave like a horny teenager at a football team party, tossing the cheerleaders into Hazzard Pond just to watch their uniforms cling and get transparent in all the best places, then plucking one back out to safety so she'll throw her wet legs around him and let his fingers find their way up under that dripping skirt. Oh, he remembers those nights, can see like it was yesterday: a wide-eyed Bo, too young yet to really get involved in the thick of it, watching over the activities with obvious admiration. How the boy had all but glowed, sweaty-hot, bright white teeth nibbling at pink lips, spurring Luke on to make sure that whichever slippery girl was in his arms squealed more loudly than any of the others around them. And how, after they'd done as much as they were willing to do out in the open, surrounded by his teammates (Hazzard girls had to pretend at protecting their reputations after all – they didn't exactly throw themselves in the pond, though they did tend to stand precariously close to the edge), he would toss the girl right back into the water then follow her there, everything but their faces obscured under the water as he made her squeal some more. Funny how he can't remember any of their names or what they looked like, beyond the vague notion that water looked good on them. Can't feel the warmth of their skin against his, all he can see is Bo there, hesitating on the edge of the water, taking in with a rare, spellbound attention, everything that Luke was showing him.

He reckons Bo had just as many out-of-control, horny nights under the stars, followed by sloshing home in wet clothes, and hoping like hell that Jesse would be out 'cooking' for the night so he wouldn't have to explain how he came to be that way. He figures the man underneath him recognizes the feeling of charges electrifying his stomach and sending his heart up against his ribs in an attempt at retreat from the energy below. The body under his knows what this is, and those sounds coming from there totally agree with the idea, but this is not what Luke wanted to do.

Not that he had a specific plan with regard to this, and maybe that was his biggest mistake. Too much time working out how to walk away from boys that need him so he won't wind up running from a man that wants to love him, and coming up with nothing useful at all. Then again, this right here is what he's walking away from his charges for. Or, not this exactly, because this is two sixteen year old boys getting it on in a pond, and remembering cheerleaders' sweaters soaked down tight against hard, dark nipples.

For being that, it's pretty damned good, honestly. The way Bo doesn't play at shy, doesn't fold his arms across his chest and pretend like he has no desire to be here in the water with Luke. His lips chase wherever Luke's lead, making clear that if Bo's got something to say, it's not worth breaking a kiss for. And if that part's good, even better is those long, bold fingers, under his shorts and gripping onto his backside, making clear the angle at which he wants their hips to meet, exactly where he reckons their bodies ought to rub together. For all the man's seeming disinterest in games of logic and assembling puzzles, Bo has pretty much put all the pieces together to produce the most beautiful picture possible. Considering they're two teenagers humping on a Saturday night.

It's when those fingers find the skin of the inside of Luke's thighs that he loses any sense of what he did or did not plan this to be. Shorts down close to his knees now, and he reckons the main thing that could make it any better would be Bo losing those sweatpants. Hard to get a hand between them, what with how Bo's grip on him keeps them tight and close, rubbing, rocking, grinding. But his right hand finds a hip anyway, cloth there, and starts pulling. It's frustrating how each contact between their bodies undoes about half the progress Luke manages to make on getting those pants down, puts a hitch in what would otherwise be a very nice get along. If he could use both hands, he might get somewhere, hell, if he could use one hand effectively he'd do better than he is now. But for the health and well-being of the lazy cousin underneath him, resting there on his back and letting those hands of his wander wherever they want, Luke's got to hold his weight up somehow.

"Bo," he grumbles somewhere between one kiss and the next. Gets another one of those agreeing noises back, then his tongue's tied up with Bo's again.

Eventually Bo grasps what Luke's after, or maybe he thinks he's come up with the idea of naked bodies all on his own. Either way, a sweaty hand comes away from Luke's hind end to get a grip on the waistband of those sweats and there it is, skin on skin. Another sound of agreement or appreciation, and Luke has no idea which of them made it.

Bo wraps a hand around both of them, sets a slow, steady pace. Meanwhile his other hand has gotten to exploring parts of Luke's hind end that are notably sensitive, and there's hardly a damned thing that Luke can do about it, what with how he's holding himself over Bo. He does try to get his right hand between them, with some thought of speeding this thing up past the ticklish torture that it's starting to become, and bringing it a hell of a lot closer to pleasure, but he gets slapped back. _Mind your own business, Luke_. As if he has any other business than what's happening right here.

Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and besides, it seems to him that being on top ought to give him some advantages. If he can't use his hands, he's still got a mouth, which, once Luke tangles his left fingers in blonde hair to tip Bo's chin up, finds its way south. There was a spot, somewhere down here, that Bo rather seemed to like the other morning. Using his ears as a guide, listening for those agreeing noises to become just that much more insistent about just how right he really is, he finds the place that makes Bo's hand speed up regardless of what pace it thinks it wants to take.

Everything's an overlay of rhythms then. Hearts playing bass, trying to lead this song on an erratically wild pace, Luke's tongue on rhythm guitar, providing a much more steady tempo, as echoed by Bo's vocalizations, which are dangerously close to sounding like Luke's name. Then there's that hand down there on lead, playing slow then fast, hitting highs only to dip down again. Eventually Luke recognizes the role of their hips in this thing, how they've been keeping a pretty steady beat all along. Luke hustles that rhythm along, rushing the whole song to double time, feeling how Bo picks up the new beat. There's a whole cacophony clamoring in his ears, until it all gets washed away by a raucous roar.

Nothing, for seconds and minutes, except breathing, hearts slamming up against rib cages, fingers finding soft skin here and there, stroking. Heat, sweat between them, sticking body to body. That and less savory things, and maybe he'd better start bringing a handkerchief to bed with him. Instead he rolls over to find a corner of the top sheet, not out of the washer for more than six hours now, and clean himself with it. Tries to hand it over to Bo, but the man's still panting there, as if he did anything more than lay on his back. So Luke takes care of him, too, then pushes the sheet away. Too hot to need any such thing anyway.

Bo finally rolls onto his side facing Luke. Breathing, close and hot, and fingers there, dancing on Luke's shoulder. Nothing calming about them, twitchy little things, tickling at him when he'd like to let the peace settle over him like it did last night.

"Luke," he says, quiet, nervous. "Don't fall asleep on me now."

"I ain't sleeping," he answers. But he would be, if there wasn't that roaming hand on him, playing in his hair now. He could complain, except it feels good to have someone lift the length of his curls away from his head and let the cool air dry the sweat there. Then again, the touch never gets any more steady or sure of itself, and it's just about to get on Luke's nerves. "What?" he asks, because he can feel how Bo's heart is still rattling around over there, and wouldn't it just serve him right for acting like a horny teenager if Bo was ready to go again already.

Big sigh, and that close, Luke gets a face-full of hot air. The attempt at backing off makes Bo's fingers tangle more insistently in his hair, keeping him close with a mumbled little apology. Deep breath in to replace what he expelled so carelessly, and—

"Luke, you ain't," more sawing breaths, and Bo's a pre-teen, about to confess his desire. A little out of sequence, but then again, his cousin's never been a logical man. "If you want to… do stuff," oh, so that's what kids are calling it these days. "You ain't got to wait until it's… like that. You could just tell me."

It's too absurd, Luke's impatient kid cousin there in the bed, that close, suggesting fair warning before sex. If a snicker escapes his lips, it's not his fault.

"Oh, fine," Bo says, shuffling around like he might just turn his back. Doesn't take much effort on Luke's part to keep him right there where he is though, just a finger stroking across the soft skin of his forearm and Bo settles back down. "I just mean, it ain't got to go quick like that. There's, if we started out before you're… like that," which Luke would like to argue against, this notion that he was already halfway there before they even got started. Then again, he was the one remembering how close tonight came to the feeling of watching teenaged girl's breasts push up against her soaked white shirt. "We could do more."

And that brings his gut back to life, twitters in his belly and tingles down below.

"Is that what you want?" he asks, and it could be that it's because he's tired that his voice is all thick like that. Could be, but it's not. "For me to do that – with you?" It's not like the thought has never crossed his mind. More like he didn't figure Bo would be the one asking for it.

"Or, you know," is Bo's counterargument. "I could do it with you." Which ought to mean the same thing, oh, but it doesn't. Means that, like always, it's Luke's ass on the line. Which does nothing to calm the little sparks of lightning dancing from his waistline to the south.

"That's – we could," do it right now, really, with just a little bit of motivation. A kiss, a touch, and they'd be halfway there. Except they really ought to decide which particular there they're headed for before Luke consents to this. "Think about it." Yeah, with their brains, not their—"Later. Go to sleep, Bo."


	23. I Want To

I Want To...

Oh, sure. Go to sleep after that little conversation. Maybe, if he went off to the bathroom right now and spent about five quality minutes with his hand, he might have a chance of falling asleep. By sometime next week, anyway.

And that wasn't even exactly the conversation he planned to have in the first place. There was something he wanted to say about kissing, touching, exploring at leisure instead of sprinting for the finish line in a dead heat. But the words got away from him, escaped before he could even say them out loud, just to wind up in Luke's mouth all twisted around. Which is – he can't deny a certain interest in where those words did go, even if it was not their intended destination. There's plenty of intrigue in plotline Luke laid before him. Yeah. He wants. That.

Too, he wants that too, after, preferably, the things he was talking about in the first place. Or trying to talk about, but then maybe it's not so surprising that he couldn't find the words. They've not been anything he's ever tried to say before, just like he's never had the same kind of urge to kiss anyone good morning the way he does Luke. In fact, seems likely that if he'd ever suggested a slower, (_more loving_) gentler approach to what they did in the bed, most of the women he's ever been with would have fainted right there on the spot.

Luke's hand moves from where it's been resting on his arm, sliding up to find the back of his head. Gives a small tug until their foreheads meet. "Relax, Bo," he says. Deep breath in, and he lets it go as slowly as he can. That's how he's always calmed himself, what Luke taught him years ago about not panicking when the air got knocked out of him after a fight or a fall. Slow breathing and everything will be all right. Same technique he uses whenever he gets squeezed into the corner of a track, and there's no doubt he's about to make contact with the wall. Deep breath before the violent smack of concrete on the hood, sparks flying upward to careen off the windshield, just looking for a drop of gasoline to combust, pressure, heat, fighting the wheel and breathing slow.

What comes is nothing like that, just a thumb stroking along the bone of his cheek, though it's just as surprising a sensation. Maybe it shouldn't be; Luke's been backward about touching all of his life, folding his arms across his chest to protect himself against affection, but always leaving his chin open for a good, solid hit. Maybe it's just his strange, older cousin's way to bother about being nice after sex, since he seems incapable of showing that side of him before or during.

"Turn over," Luke suggests, so he does, even if it means rolling away from that body so close to his in order to do it. Tugs up his sweatpants as he turns and it's the cold side of the bed he winds up in, where no body heat has touched yet tonight. That doesn't last long, not when the life-long heat-source of his cousin follows after him, fitting himself close against Bo's skin, one arm around his waist. Aside from the thoughts running through his head right now, this could be any late fall night from a childhood hunting trip, spent in one pup tent while Jesse snored in the other, ten feet away. The Smokies were an icy place come sundown, and Bo always tried to ignore the chill like the other men in his family seemed able to. Made every effort not to get laughed at for whining, but eventually he'd give in and admit to being cold. Wasn't so bad, putting up with a little teasing from Luke, because the next thing that always happened was the older boy zipping their sleeping bags together, then wrapping himself around Bo until the shivers stopped.

At some point Luke declared them too old for that, and Bo did his best to tolerate cold like the young adult he was coming to be. Still, it seems he spent a few more nights in the safety of Luke's arms, like after Lavinia died, and then there was that horrible night after Jesse was gone. Even after the days-long temper tantrum that Bo threw about things that there was no way Luke could have controlled anyway, even after all the low-downest things he could think of to say got shouted at high volume, Luke held him through the night, and he could sleep.

The familiar feel of Luke's protective arm around him now manages to settle his heart from where it's been banging at his chest and suggesting a rhythm for his hips, lets his eyes close and his body rest. And if, some two or three peaceful dreams of bright Hazzard sunshine and skinny dipping in icy creeks later, Luke rolls away and Bo has to find the quilt to replace his warmth, that's all right. He knows his cousin's not going far.

Not far at all. Nowhere, really, because after a somewhat restless night, when the first edges of pink dawn dig under his eyelids enough to just wake him, Luke's right there. Crazy blue eyes, no one he's ever met has anything near that color that can see right through whatever brave front Bo might want to put up.

Which is why he's already shaking when Luke says, "I want to." No need to explain what, it's there in the words they said and didn't last night, and in the intensity of that look that he'd bet has been watching him for hours now. Wanting him that long and that _hard_. Damn.

He swallows, but there's no moisture in his mouth to wet his throat. No moisture anywhere, maybe, except where it's all drained down to. South.

"All right," he says, though they haven't said exactly what he's agreeing to. Doesn't matter; any time Luke's going to look at him like that, the answer will always be yes.

There's a hand on his back, he's not sure when it landed there, or maybe that's where it's always been. It's movement that makes him aware of it, tiny little strokes of a thumb. Nervous maybe, no not that. More like unsure, like it doesn't know how it's supposed to be gentle instead of determined, how to cradle instead of demanding.

Luke's lips, though, they seem to have a slightly better idea of what to do. Or maybe they're just responding to Bo's; small starts, little kisses, tiny nibbles. Careful, gentle.

Bo's hand finds Luke's heart, steady, strong beat under his hand. Not the same wild beast it's been the last two nights, but Bo has to figure this pace isn't his cousin's normal rhythm, either. Not unless Luke's been out running laps.

That thumb is still lost somewhere around Bo's spine, sweeping back and forth but never making any ground. This is his cousin, trying to be slow and caring, thoughtful. Luke holding back, and it's not pretty, nothing like what it's supposed to be.

So Bo pushes against that chest in front of him, shoves until Luke's on his back, and Bo's there above him. Kissing with abandon, until there's a dizzy swirl behind his eyelids, until Luke forgets how he's supposed to control himself, until that hand on Bo's back gains the confidence to explore, to move around to his chest, knuckles grazing breastbone. Somewhere between restrained desire and wanton need, that's what Bo's after. Turns out Luke can manage it just fine.

Better than fine when those knuckles slip lower, tickling against Bo's stomach until he pulls back. Face away from Luke's now, and he's getting stared at again. Gives him the unsettling feeling that Luke kisses with his eyes open; would make sense, actually. The Marine may be retired, but he still lurks in the way Luke waits and watches, just in case of enemy attack.

But this here is friendly fire, a fact Bo aims to remind him of with more kissing, his own hand searching over what he can easily reach of Luke's body, looking for tender spots. Hard to do this from up here where he has to work to keep some of his weight off the chest below him. Someday, when the two of them figure out the speed limit of what they're doing here (and what _are_ they doing here? Oh God, later is a fine time to go thinking about that) he'll have to remember that this part might be best on their sides, leaving them with equal access to each other. Someday.

Meanwhile Luke's got two free hands, one of which is creeping ever southward with a tickling touch, while the other grips at the back of his head, catching in the mess of hair there, nudging and tipping so his lips can find neck. Funny thing about Luke, seems like there's only so much kissing he can do before he has to go off in search of virgin territory (and Bo would like to wish him luck, but then he remembers that there are, in fact, untouched parts of him, and Luke's just the one to want to go after them), tracking down sensitivities like a hound after a scent. Which is all right, in fact, around the time Luke gets to that soft little patch of skin just under his ear, Bo reckons it's actually rather good. Only problem, really, is it leaves Bo with nothing to do but squirm. Up against Luke. And then get a dirty chuckle in his ear as a bit of smug commentary.

He'd complain, he would, but he's only got so much breath, and more important things to do with it.

"Luke?" There, see, that took all of it. There's going to have to be quite a bit of panting before his next word.

His cousin stops the movement of his tongue along the edge of Bo's earlobe (and waits through the answering thrust of Bo's hips against his) then hums a "hmmm?" back. And the buzz of that makes for another uncontrolled response from below.

"Um," he says, tries to pull away from Luke long enough to talk, but of course his cousin never gives up. He just tracks his lips back down Bo's neck until he gives up on getting away. "Which—how?" Because they've come to the point where he needs to know the answer to that question that's been nagging at the back of his mind.

Luke's eyes close for maybe the first time this morning. "You can," he says, then goes after that ticklish area where neck meets shoulder.

Any properly raised southern boy knows the rules of this game. Luke offers, Bo is supposed to counter offer – _no, you_. They're meant to go back and forth until someone gives in and lets the other one be the bigger man. He knows the rules of the game, but he reckons Luke is already big enough to give him pause—he doesn't want to provide him the opportunity to get bigger through debate.

"First," Luke amends, and right there it becomes a real offer.

He's dizzy, slipping, falling until he gets caught by Luke's lips. A kiss spinning just as fast as his head, every bit as disorganized and messy. Ideas about how this ought to be go flying out the window along with any sanity Bo might have been accused of having for wanting this so very much for so many years.

That hand is back along his spine again. Not tentative and lost this time, more like reassuring. _Settle down, Bo_, it says.

So he does, rolls onto his side with Luke following. Holds the kiss, grabs that big old hand that lifts off his back and holds it, too. Fingers threading together as the kiss slides down from crazy to gentle, until it becomes two men panting in the bed.

"What," he says, rethinks it. "We need—what, what have you got?" It's a good thing they're former moonshine runners, men who need few words to convey important thoughts. If he actually had to say the full sentence that formed in his head, he might just die, either or embarrassment or breathlessness. Either way, it would be a reasonable way to go, so long as he could hold onto Luke as he passed to the other side. All the same, he'd as soon finish what they've started here, if his passing is pending.

Luke kisses him again, disentangles his hand from where Bo's got something close to a death grip on it. One more kiss with that newly freed hand cupping Bo's cheek and, "I'll be right back." Cold air where Luke should be and the man hasn't even made it out of the bed yet.

"Luke." He might as well admit right up front that it's a whine; Luke's going to call it that anyway. "You knew you wanted to… why didn't you," get it sooner, or maybe bring it to bed in the first place? Oh, that last thought is not logical, but hell, none of this is.

Luke snickers a little, or maybe that's just a smile amidst the heavy breaths. "Because I was comfortable where I was." Lying there, watching you sleep.


	24. Drive

Drive

It's painful. Not even the parts that should be maybe. Or those are painful too, but Luke's expecting that, has done about as much readying himself for such a thing as possible.

No, the painful part is how Bo's so cautious, careful about it all. Behaving like Bo Duke was never meant to, like he's not the same fearless man who can bounce a car over a deep ravine as if it was nothing more than some dip in the pavement. Like virgin, maybe, wondering if she's getting any of this right and reckoning she must not be because no one's smiling.

Then again, the cards are stacked against the man in a way he'd never allow if he'd been given the opportunity to deal, if he hadn't listened to Luke and slept through the better part of the night. Gave Luke the edge, watching him sleep and thinking about what they'd talked around. Left him with time and space to remember a younger version of Jesse teaching him not to fear the water by tipping the canoe over in the middle of the pond, and there was also that Drill Instructor, Neville, who 'helped' recruits out of the plane for their first jump. Then, of course, there was Bo himself, nudging at the accelerator no matter how hard Luke winced against the impending crash (that never came). All his life has been about diving into what could get him killed, and he reckoned out that putting his ass on the line for Bo didn't amount to anything near the amount of danger he has been known to jump into at the height of any fire season.

All night to think about it and two seconds to commit. Bo whining about what he hadn't brought with him last night or slipped away to get since, but the pain was all Luke's when the time came for climbing out of the bed and walking down the long, cold hallway to the kitchen. Corn oil – and wouldn't Jesse be proud to know that his boys had finally figured out a new use for the traditional family crop – because it was about the least offensive thing he could think of to use, and back to his room without ever fully standing up. Into the bed and getting stared at by those wide eyes, scared look like Bo's face used to get when he was small enough that it made sense. Now that he's six-foot-plus and big enough to hurt Luke, there's just no excuse for it. Yeah, all that hurt before the pain even started.

So he went back to slow and gentle, because the frightened virgin that his cousin was imagining himself to be wanted it that way. Not 'like that' with Luke ready and needing, no, he was supposed to quietly want until Bo was ready for him. And that was fine, mostly. The kissing was good enough, and Bo's hands were getting braver about where they were willing to explore. Still, Luke reckoned, this thing needed to find some forward momentum before it stalled right here, which was nowhere particularly good. So he tugged at the sweatpants that Bo was still wearing (and the boy had the gall to complain that Luke hadn't already gone for the oil when he was too lazy to get himself properly undressed to use it), felt the wiry hairs of his legs stand on end as his hand passed over them. Felt Bo lift his hip to accommodate the tug of cloth, felt the curvature of thigh muscle under his fingers as they slid down, felt the shiver when he stopped halfway and reversed his course. Felt the kiss change from an innocent young girl's into that thing his cousin had always been. Untamed, unconcerned, raring to go. Funny how such a little thing, just four fingers where they'd never been before, could do that.

So he'd let his four fingers do some more wandering, around the inside of that thigh and up, felt the shiver and squirm until Bo reached down to grab his wrist in some kind of self-defense, but suddenly ready. Oh he was ready, getting up onto his knees, and shoving Luke onto his back.

Between Luke's legs then and kissing again, different angle, different feel, different purpose. This here was the real prelude; everything up until now had been playing at the idea, getting used to it, testing the solidity of the thesis. This here was Bo's hand wrapped around him, distracting him away from his thoughts. This here was complete and utter insanity was what it was.

Only way to deal with it was to dive in, so he'd reached over his own head for the bottle of oil, concentrated around what Bo's hand was doing to him in order to uncap it. Poured out a small amount into his own palm, and did his best not to watch Bo's eyes grow wide again. Oh, his cousin was scared, no doubt, but there was really no chance of him backing down, and he didn't have half a clue what fear was anyway, and wouldn't until the day he wound up doing mental calculation about how much oil he was willing to have inside of him, versus how much he figured it would take to decrease the friction to zero. When that day came, Luke would worry about Bo's fear. For now he reckoned his best bet would be to keep things moving.

Which was why he wrapped his hand around Bo to spread the oil. Got a hiss and, "Cold," for his efforts, but it wasn't really. Cold, that was – it was room temperature, and if the room wasn't exactly Hazzard hot, that wasn't Luke's fault. Besides, it had to have gotten warmed some by his hand. Must've been getting warmer all the time, based on the way Bo's eyelids got heavy with the touch and the quiet little way the corners of his mouth turned up. Yeah, Bo got used to the oil quick enough.

And Bo discovering that kind of happy turned out to be just a pretty thing to watch, which was why he let his hand keep spreading oil that was already pretty well distributed, why he picked up the same rhythm as what Bo was doing to him. Between the feel and the look on that face above his, it was almost enough.

But they'd already done this. And it was fine, just fine, Luke had no complaints about it (it seemed that Bo had a few). But it wasn't what he'd spent the whole night working through, what he'd asked Bo for this morning. So he brought it to a stop, licked his lips.

"Ready?" he asked, and Bo nodded. Born ready. He reckoned the question was about to get asked back at him, and that was why his hand cupped the back of that blonde head and pulled it back down to get back to kissing. He had no interest whatsoever in answering that query. Besides, the shift of position got their hands out of the way, their bodies close and rubbing. One last practice run, then Luke hooked one leg around Bo's back. _It's time._

More minutes of oversized eyes, nervously rambling fingers, and stumbling starts. Funny how Bo could look to him for advice on how to manage this when Luke not only had no clue, but also couldn't see what was going on down there to advise Bo if he wanted to. And he didn't want to, had no desire to take the lead when he'd already given it up. Hard to reach, but he ran his knuckles down the line of Bo's breastbone, onto his stomach. Reassurance or stimulation, even he didn't know, but it worked. Bo moved.

Up against him then, Luke could feel him and, "Close your eyes, Luke," Bo said. "Close them," got repeated in response to the skeptical face he made back. Whether he watched or not, there was about to be pain.

Bo's hand came up to run itself through his hair, strange little reassurance in that, like somewhere between closed eyes and messed up hair, this would all turn out fine. Or it was a terrible trick, and that seemed more likely when that hand came down to cover his eyes for him.

A kiss that made his stomach take to flipping, maybe mostly because of how leaning up for it made Bo move against him, weaving their bodies together and spreading oil in places it didn't need to be, with a tickling hot pressure all the way.

"I need this hand back," Bo warned, breathless, into his ear. "So just keep those eyes closed on your own."

He tried, tried to relax as Bo sat back, arranging his legs as he saw fit, left arm snaking under and gripping his hipbone with those long, hot fingers.

Wound up watching through his eyelashes, concentrating on the flush of Bo's face and neck, the teeth nibbling at his lip in concentration. Hand between them, guiding, then pain. But that was expected, Luke forced himself to relax between the contractions of it, concentrating on the feel of Bo's thumb gripping onto his right hip. Stupid trick, but it worked.

Bo looking at him, finally catching him with his eyes open. Funny look on his face there, calling Luke a cheater, and it made snapshots fire through his brain. Tests of strength between two young boys, Bo's hair plastered to his head with sweat, losing but grinning for all the world with the effort. Hot arm across his shoulders and giggles in his ear, breath so close his hair shuffled under it as Bo whispered to him something about not being able to hit the broad side of a barn and pointing after a wanton arrow. Smell of heat rising off the land around them just before the cold water of a hose in his face, getting breathed up his nose, even as he felt the hard body under his, tackling Bo into the dirt, finding the hose and getting his revenge before a water fight turned into wrestling in the mud. _God,_ if anyone had given him a choice, he would have stayed there forever, playing with Bo. Just boys being boys, and if he'd ever had any say in it, that would have been enough, it never would have come to this…

He's brought back to the here and now, not by the pain in his body or his heart, but by a gentle hand on his forehead, pushing his hair back away from his eyes. Bo's no longer accusing him of cheating, he's accepting things the way they're happening. And heaven help them both, if the option had been put in front of them before birth, he might have chosen to be Bo, with his ability to love how things turn out, instead of worrying how they'll go wrong.

"All right?" Bo asks, and considering the effort he must be putting into holding himself back right now, it sounds so rational. Like if Luke asked him to, he'd wait forever, poised right here. But that's not the Bo Duke he grew up with, and it's sure as heck no side of his cousin he want to see right now. They can't both be having second thoughts or they'll wind up stuck, right here, until eternity.

Reaches up to find Bo's hand in his hair, takes hold and brings it down closer to his shoulder where he can keep his grip comfortably, fingers threading through. Nods his head and grips tightly against the pain, against memories of the past and fears of the future. "Drive," he grunts.

Little smile in response to that, and everything starts to move. They never seem to get it quite right, pacing tripping over fits and starts, not quite sharing the rhythm or dancing to the same tune. They figure it out, and if it's nowhere near the best either of them has ever had, it's good enough.

Good enough that when Bo's body stops shaking, when he rolls away, but not far, after those few kisses his cousin insists on before he drifts off to sleep flat on his back, still warm and close, Luke keeps holding on. Stays that way until the holding on isn't enough anymore, the sunshine of Hazzard afternoons fades back into the chill of a Montana April morning, and Luke pulls the quilt up over Bo's chilled skin, pricking back up into goose bumps, before slipping silently out of the bed.


	25. Waking Up Alone

Waking Up Alone

Waking up alone isn't the surprise it wants to be. Most of the days of their shared lives have begun with Luke waking up first, out of bed and on the move before Bo's eyes even think about opening. Of course, used to be he couldn't sleep but that extra five minutes bought while Luke got up and through his own morning routine before shaking his shoulder. They were younger then, and maybe it made a certain kind of sense how Luke took responsibility for him, even after he got plenty old enough to look after himself. Maybe it didn't, maybe it took the Marines to teach Bo about not taking his cousin for granted. Then again, they fell into that same routine, eventually, when Luke got back. After Bo got over being shy, after Luke got over being standoffish, after they both got over the notion that no one had missed anyone else and they surely didn't need to get to relying on each other again.

They've lived apart now for far longer than the four years they were separated then. Developed morning routines that have nothing to do with chores, nothing to do with each other. It makes sense that Luke would get up and leave him to sleeping, and it's possible that Bo even felt it the moment his cousin left his side. Doesn't make the bed any less lonely.

Compensating for small losses is what makes him throw his own sweats into what appears to be the corner where Luke's dirty laundry collects, then go searching through the dresser for something of Luke's to wear. Another pair of sweats and that oversized shirt from yesterday. Comfortable, even if it doesn't quite smell like Luke anymore. Bo reckons he smells enough like his cousin before putting on his clothes anyway. A shower would be a very good idea.

Luke's already had one, looks like. There in that room off the end of the living room, that space that seems to be something of an office, just sitting and staring at nothing. Coffee cup not far from his fingers, and a crumb-littered plate on the desk in front of him, but there's a look to it all like the man in there with the tousled, still damp hair, has been there for hours, unmoving. Somewhere else, maybe, but he hears Bo's footsteps and looks up.

Tired, drawn, face hair dark against pale skin. Tight shoulders under a cotton shirt, same kind of plaid he's always been fond of. Vacant look to the man, all except those eyes. So much blue, all of it focused on Bo.

"Luke?" Maybe he's hurting, but then again, there are better places he could be sitting than that old wooden chair, if that's the case.

"Gabriela's looking for you," Luke says, then those eyes close, and everything freezes. Not for any real duration, just long enough for thoughts to flow through Bo's mind like excuses about lost homework that the dog ate, and that was before it blew away in a tornado. Then there's that same blue stare back again, maybe just a bit red around the edges.

"I know she is," he says, because Luke wouldn't believe in sudden weather events, and Flash hasn't been around for years to eat anything at all.

"Best call her." And there it is. All day yesterday, Bo waited for Luke to panic, to push him away, and there it is, in front of him now. Yesterday Luke allowed morning kisses. This morning, Bo reckons he'd better not even try to touch him.

"I," was going to. Someday. "Didn't know what to say to her."

"I would think that would be pretty obvious," Luke counters. "But if it ain't… maybe you should tell her you're on your way to see her." And then get out of here on the first train to Los Angeles.

"Luke." He couldn't have slept for more than an hour. And before that, maybe ninety minutes ago at the most, he was as close to the man in front of him as he's ever been. Now Luke's somewhere else, nowhere good, and about ready to send Bo someplace worse. "It ain't like that. I just wanted a day or two to figure out how to say it."

A laugh escapes from Luke's mouth, not in the least amused. Kind of incredulous, like he used to get whenever the law accused them of truly insidious crimes like stealing cookies from orphans. "_No_ don't seem like nothing that would take very long to think of, Bo. Nor say." Quiet, calm delivery, twice as dangerous as any hollering would be.

"That's…" mean, really, kind of a cruel way to talk to someone who thinks you might love them. Who leaves love songs on your voice mail, and Luke must have listened to every message that Bo saved, plus any new ones that might have shown up since. "That's all I ever planned to say, Luke. I was just trying to figure out how."

They've been just about frozen up until now, Luke sitting in that corner of his, and Bo standing in the middle of the emptiest part of the living room with nothing nearby to sit on or grab onto. But that's probably for the best, considering how Luke is standing now, and they can meet eye to eye.

"_How_ ain't an issue, Bo. You just say no." A few steps forward and they're within touching distance now, but neither of them really has the inclination. "And you don't," he bites out, "go saving her messages like little souvenirs. Like things you want so bad you can't stand to erase them."

If they were younger they'd be a lot closer now, chest to chest, Luke's chin tipped back to maintain eye contact. It would have been a prelude to fists flying, but they're too old for that now, or too alone up here on this ridge Luke lives on. No Daisy to scream at them about not hurting each other, no Jesse with his shotgun to get their attention, every little bit of their attention, away from the brawl.

"They wasn't _souvenirs_, Luke," he hears himself sneer, and maybe the Duke boys aren't so grown up after all. "They was me showing her the courtesy of letting her down easy." After all, it hasn't been more than a couple of weeks since she came all the way across the country just to see him.

More laughter – that's really nothing of the sort – from Luke. "Easy. Easy like I'm busy this week, but I'll call you next?'

"No, not—Luke!" Unreasonable as always, and he probably would call up a woman he was with not so long ago, just to tell her to get lost. "I ain't never planned to say nothing that would make her think I still wanted her. Just nothing that would hurt her, is all."

"Like you wouldn't go saying nothing to hurt that Mindy Collins, neither," Luke retorts. "If I wasn't there, Bo—"

"If you wasn't there I wouldn't never have spent two minutes with her, Luke." They're getting closer now, chests almost touching in some kind of mockery of how Bo was lying on Luke's ribcage, waiting for his heartbeat to come back to normal, while his cousin ran fingers through his hair, not much over an hour ago. "Don't you go acting like it was me that wanted her. Or her kids. If anyone had any interest in her it was you."

"Wasn't me that wanted to stay for breakfast," Luke hisses at him, more vehement than that even tone he likes to take in arguments. "Wasn't me who wanted anything more than to get here as quick as we could, so's we wouldn't have any woman," all but spitting the words now, "or her kids showing up when we's—together like that."

"Together," he says through gritted teeth. "Like that." Maybe he doesn't like the way Luke talks about it, like it's something dirty and hidden. And maybe it is, from the likes of Mindy Collins, but not here in this space, hardly more from twenty steps where—"Don't you go throwing Mindy at me like that, when you know I didn't want nothing to do with her. Just because you went and got all scared about being with me, what it means and—"

Oh, that wasn't smart. Not even a little bit smart. Luke doesn't bother with humorless laughter this time, just steps back from where Bo's finger somehow got to be poking in the middle of his chest. "Maybe you forgot," Luke snarls. "Who it was that let you—I ain't the one that's scared, Bo. You'd best make up your mind what you want." And Luke's put that space between them again, nowhere near touching distance, just walking away from him.

Pointless, really, when he knows Bo's just going to follow right after him, back to that same little room he found Luke in a few minutes ago. "I done made up my mind, Luke. I done come all the way out here to be with you. You can't go faulting me for not wanting to be nasty to a girl when it ain't her fault I don't want her!"

Luke's reaching under the chair for his boots, stiff movement to the bend, awkward like Luke never gets. "Fault ain't got nothing to do with it, Bo. If you ain't gonna be with her, best she knows it now, so she can find herself some other man to sing love songs for." Back up on his feet and leaning against the open doorframe to pull one onto his foot.

"I ain't saved those messages because I ever wanted to hear them again." Luke stops, footwear no more than halfway on his left foot. Skepticism in the intensity of his eyes squinting down. "I saved them because I—Luke," he interrupts, because the man's back after that boot again; can't be more than a few minutes before he'll be storming away from Bo like he keeps doing and dang it, that habit's getting old. "Are you telling me that you would ever be that cold to Anita, just tell her no and get lost? You telling me you ain't kept nothing from when the two of you was together?" Not that he's seen any evidence; everything he's bothered to look at is either an exceedingly practical part of Luke's daily life, or a memento from Hazzard.

"Anita left me," Luke reminds him. "Besides," and finally the balancing on one foot game comes to an end, Luke sitting down to finish putting on his boots. "It's different. I didn't know you was coming back with me; I didn't have a chance to go throwing nothing away. You could have got rid of them messages right away. If you didn't want them."

And that right there takes all the wind out of his sails, no fight left in him. He's looking for a place to sit, and Luke's on his feet again, digging keys out of his pocket.

"Luke," he says, and it's just begging, really. "Don't go off." _Don't leave me._

There's a pause, those eyes staring into his. _Give me some space._ "I ain't going far," is the concession. "I'll be back before dark." Which won't be for a good many hours now.

"Luke," he says again, but his cousin's already to the door, hand on the knob.

"Everything I got left over from Anita is in the storage closet. Under the blankets. So you ain't got to go snooping for none of it." And Luke's gone, just the door closing quietly behind him.


	26. In the Door by Dusk

In the Door by Dusk

It's the sight of his own clothes that does it to him. Before that he manages to stay calm and rational. At least he thinks he's rational; it's not like there's anyone else around to test out his rationality against. But since he just sits where he landed, sipping at his coffee and finishing off the toast he made himself, he reckons he's pretty calm. Just waiting for Bo to come out so they can talk about it.

Just talk, just come to some kind of an understanding between them. About how Luke reckons that it's time Bo went ahead and left for Los Angeles already. How they've both lied to him long enough about what this thing here between them is, and he doesn't blame Bo, not when he wasn't the one that's done the lion's share of the lying. No, that honor was all Luke's. In fact, to show there were no hard feelings, he'd even pay for the airplane ticket, but Bo would have to find his own way to Butte, because Luke couldn't quite face driving him to the airport. It would be all very civil, and he'd even find a way to hug Bo goodbye, when the time came.

But when the man presents himself, dressed in Luke's clothes like some kind of date-turned-bedmate that didn't have anything clean of their own to wear (_it smells like you – I like it_) wide blue eyes still half in awe of the morning's activities, a gaping hole opens up between Luke and civility.

What he throws in Bo's face about Gabriela is logical at least, as is Bo's response to it. But logic never has known how to exist alongside rage, and that, it turns out, is what Luke's feeling. He doesn't know it for sure until he's accusing Bo of wanting Mindy Collins, when he knows perfectly well that neither of them would have done a damned thing with her, even in their skirt-chasing days, even if she hadn't been surrounded by heartbroken brats that spoke of poor judgment and an utter lack of self-respect. But once he figures it out, the only clear thought he's got is that he and his rage need to get out of the house, away from Bo, before they gang up together on his cousin, making a mess the likes of which there'll be no cleaning up.

Not a mile from his house, he's lost. He could point out his location on a local street map if one existed, though he doubts one does. He knows precisely where he is, could give pretty close to accurate latitude and longitude, and yet he's lost with no particular destination in mind.

To the north and the east lie the interstate, and it's probably best if he doesn't get too close to that. Easy, so frighteningly simple to find himself hundreds of miles away, too much space to give himself when he's got to get home before dark. To the west is Anaconda, the 'big city' of the region. Smaller than Capitol City back home, but East Commercial Drive is absolutely lined with bars that open at eight in the morning. Another poor choice, another gap between him and sanity that's too wide to get filled by nightfall.

South is winding roads through mostly state land, just wilderness. Trying not to think about Bo, but every bump in the road is a fairly sincere reminder of exactly what a matched set of idiots the two Duke boys have managed to become.

The fact that Bo is loathe to say no to a girl is neither a positive nor negative indication of his interest in being with her; this is a fact Luke has known from the time they grew up enough to find the truly young girls, stumbling around in their mother's high heels and wearing too much makeup, distasteful. Happened first during that NASCAR stint that they did together, Bo backed into a corner by a girl that had no business being in a bar yet, much less propositioning one Bo Duke. Luke shook his head at the spectacle, but Bo beckoned him closer, whispering how he didn't want the girl. Luke wound up making his excuses for him, because Bo's vocabulary lacked anything close to 'no thanks' when it came to girls. Got to be a habit, looking for signs that Bo wanted out from under the shocking pink nails clutching at his shirt, reaching to turn his head for a kiss. Made Luke angry to watch those girls, wondering where their daddies were, or in absence of that, big brothers. If they were notably underage, he'd stick them in a cab and send them home.

Got better when they got back to Hazzard where rock salt propelled at high speed provided Bo with all the excuses he needed for escaping from the young ones. The older ones – well, even when it came to Lulu Hogg flirting with him, pinching cheeks and all but kissing him, Bo had no idea how to say no.

It's clearer than the snowmelt ponds that dot low lying lands of this area that Gabriela wants Bo. It's there in the pet names she used, the way she all but scent-marked him over the phone lines with her love songs. What Bo wants – well, he's a Duke, compelled to honesty, especially when it comes to what he tells other Dukes. If he says he doesn't want to be with the girl, then he doesn't. Not this week anyway, as for last week and next, those are up for whatever fancy grabs the man. As to why he saved her messages, it's most likely because he's the same brainless wonder he's always been. And Luke doesn't want to think about him anymore.

Which makes his next decision for him, about which way to turn when the road forks up ahead. Away from the rutted state park roads and along the smoother pavement, past the wooded campgrounds and on to the next barren stretch. One more hill and he's where he might have planned to go, if he'd ever had a plan in the first place. Clump of trailers off the road, in some semblance of an organized community. Office to the left, then one, two, three narrow lanes down, turn right, go to the blue one. And it's just convenient that Smitty's out in front, poking at the innards of his shiny, red pickup.

Most of the boys from his jumping team live in Anaconda, right downtown in boarding houses or efficiency apartments. Hardly spend any time there in high season anyway, and come winter it's probably safer to be in town, clumped together and keeping an eye on each other through the heavy snows. When they're not all off consummating their love for these mountains they protect, running their skis lovingly along the ridges of Discovery Basin and Maverick Mountain.

Not Smitty, who has a need to play house in a more permanent way, spending cold winter nights snuggling up close to his plain and pudgy little wife, with the squared off glasses that sit high on her pug nose. She's cute enough, Luke reckons, and Smitty seems to adore her. Hell, he married her before either of them hit twenty-one.

"Duke!" the kid greets him, trotting right up close to the Jeep Luke's still in the process of parking. "What're you doing here?"

Every now and then it occurs to him to try to convince these kids to call him Luke, at least some of the time. Strange feeling to go missing the sound of his own first name, but probably the only one who would take him up on it would be Marks, and that boy wouldn't use his name with any kind of affection. Besides, it's not the kind of favor he'd want to return; having to call Smitty by his given name of Doug, or even his proper surname of Smith, would do the scrawniest of the bunch as disservice. Smitty, at least, makes him sound like less of the high school sophomore stuck on the sidelines of the big game when all he really wants is to play with the big boys, and more like the man he's struggling to become.

"Trouble with the truck?" Luke asks instead delving into the deeper meaning of his purpose here, which even he doesn't quite know.

"Nah," and the kid's face is a little flushed as he steps back to give Luke the room to get out of his Jeep. There's a sheepish grin there and a right hand gets offered for Luke to shake. "I just like to tinker with it when the wife ain't here and after me about fixing the curtain rods or moving the stove out so she can clean behind it. I ain't doing nothing more than looking, mostly."

Luke claps the kid on the shoulder in some kind of masculine solidarity over the notion of getting out from under the thumb of nagging wives, before letting go of his hand. If puppies had blue eyes, they'd look just like Smitty's do right now, staring up at Luke with utter admiration.

"Where is Michelle?" Luke asks, just being friendly, just breaking the intensity of how this kid treats him like he's one hell of a lot more worthy than he really is.

"In town, doing some shopping, then getting her hair done." Girl stuff. "I hope she don't get it cut too short this time." Yeah, that would be a tragedy. As instantly bored with the topic of Michelle as Luke is, he'd rather stand here in the dust of a driveway and discuss the merits of a pixie cut versus a bob, or – what the hell – a full head shave, rather than what comes next. "Wouldn't have expected to see you. Where's your cousin?"

Luke wipes his palm against the back of his jeans in an absent-minded gesture, shrugs. "Left him home for a few hours. You know how it is with family. Sometimes you just need to get away for a little while." It's the truth, or as much of it as Luke's willing to tell, anyway.

Smitty snickers, kind of a catching gasp in his throat that's nothing like rolling laughter, but always makes Luke smile in response. The kid may have spent more time warming a bench than any Duke boy ever did, but he's got other qualities that remind Luke of home. Like an ability to enjoy life with a certain sort of silly abandon.

"I know what's that's like. Come on," he adds, slamming the hood to his pickup and turning back toward the tin can of a trailer that has no business staying upright through the sustained mountain winds of these parts. "Last time my mother-in-law was here, I just about took to sleeping in my truck there."

Turns out that Michelle has left behind a pot of cold spaghetti, which Smitty and Luke take out onto the tiny deck off the back of the trailer. Two bachelors, sitting in the relatively still and warm spring sunshine, eating straight out of the pan. Their concession to manners is that they bother with forks.

"Damn," Luke says, no thoughts about worrying over mildly blue language in this space they've carved out together – two men who live, sleep and fight side-by-side like he once did as a Marine, where cursing was one of the more basic survival skills – "Michelle can cook."

More snorting snickers from the kid on the other side of the white plastic table with the close-cropped hair. "It's why I married her."

"Shoot," Luke answers. "If that was the only criteria I'd be married to Sherrie at the diner." Who is the most grandmotherly woman Luke's ever met this side of Emma Tisdale, and has half adopted his whole team of jumpers as if they were her own. Welcomes them with open arms and always figures out there's some discount they're entitled to before she retreats to the kitchen to rustle up the best steak in all of Montana for them, and that's saying something.

And who would swat the both of their behinds for the mess of spaghetti sauce on their hands and faces. Instead there's a crow hovering over them, banking on snatching up some part of their leftovers.

"Why _did_ you marry her, Smit?" he asks, then rethinks it. "So young, I mean. You wasn't hardly more than kids when you swore that whole 'until death do you part' thing." Heck, they're still kids now, hardly past the age of playing you-show-me-yours-I'll-show-you-mine together.

"I loved her." She must love him too, if he talks with his mouth full like that when she's the one sitting across from him. "And I wanted a family. After my dad left, it was just me and my mom. I always wanted brothers and sisters to play with, but she never had no more kids." And his father more or less vanished, only to show up here and there over the course of his son's growing up years. Luke knows this part from the quiet moments after they've boarded the drop-off flight, and before they make the leap out into nothingness below. It's the best time to learn what makes each of his boys tick, to get the closest thing possible to honest answers when dealing with bravado-filled, overgrown adolescents. "Besides," the kid adds, staring down the last orange-coated tendrils of their shared lunch. "I ain't exactly the same kind of ladies' man you are. I still ain't figured out how you get so many girls."

Shoot, he doesn't exactly know anymore, either. Started out as a game of wearing down their resistance, then later it was more like competing against Bo. Somewhere after a red-headed racecar driver wandered off with his heart in pursuit of derby cups, he stopped trying, leaving the girls to flock after his cousin, but his retirement from the meat market was only partly successful. He kept on getting his share. Still does, and he's got no idea why. It's not like he's had Bo at his side to attract them in a lot of years now.

"State secret, kid," he says with what he hopes is more of a smirk than a grimace. Time to get up off of the hard bench here, stretch out some sore parts. He grabs the now empty pot as his excuse, and heads back into the tiny kitchen to put it in the sink. Doesn't surprise him one bit when he hears a voice from right behind; Smitty always has followed pretty close on his tail. Wise plan when they're off in the smoky woods, but it seems like a full-time habit with this kid.

"Tell you a secret if you promise not to tell Michelle."

What are the odds? He can't think of four words he's ever said to the girl, beyond hello. "Shoot," he encourages, as he turns on the water and finds the sponge. Cleaning up after the two of them have devoured what the poor, young bride might have intended to provide a week's worth of meals is the least he can do.

"We're gonna have a kid. Around Thanksgiving, we think."

Kids raising kids. Luke knows all about that, having grown up in Hazzard. In fact, he's been made to understand that his own parents were hardly past picking at pimples when he happened along. "Congratulations," he says, turning around to grab the kid into a quick hug.

"Thanks. Michelle don't want to go telling anyone until after the first trimester has passed." Smitty answers, tips of his ears glowing as red as Wiggins' hair reflecting the glow of a flame, same kind of warning feel to it, like Luke's gotten too close. And maybe he has. The way this boy wishes so hard for an older brother, it's probably not safe for Luke to go hugging him like that. Because brothers are a lifetime kind of a thing, and there's still that contract out there that he hasn't signed.

"You know," Smitty says as Luke turns back to the sink. "I understand why you never settled down. Hell, if I could get girls like you do, I wouldn't ever have gotten married neither." So much for loving Michelle so much he had to swear the rest of his life away. "But I think you would have made a great dad. Too bad you never had kids."

Well, if the Hazzard rumor mill is to be believed, he's got a couple, grown up to drinking age now. Probably tearing up the Boar's Nest right this minute, but ain't neither of them his.

"Hey," he says, tipping the pot over to dry in the drainer, then turning off the water. "Thanks for lunch. I got to get going home." Eventually. After some more driving, maybe down to Anaconda after all. There's a bowling alley there, and though he only learned the game a couple of years ago when his boys took him out with them, he reckons it might just be where he wants to be today. Smashing down those smiling pins then watching them get set up so he can smash them down again. Beats barroom brawls where his own teeth might be in danger, and he's not sure his body's up to taking that kind of a beating today anyway.

"Thanks for stopping by," Smitty answers, and his eyes hold Luke's for a second, trapped there in a tin can on the edge of a ridge in the middle of nowhere. "If you really got family to go home to," the kid advises, "we can always get another team leader. You can't never get another family."

Aw, hell. Now he's going to have to bowl two-fisted, and well into the afternoon. He favors a heavy ball and a powerful throw.

And when he's finally retreated to the safety of his Jeep, Smitty lobs out one last little zinger: "Bring your cousin by to meet the team, Duke. We want to know who's taking you away from us."

He's got no answer for that, so he just waves and steps on the accelerator.

And when he reckons he's watched a black ball crash into little, white pins enough times, he heads home. In the door by dusk, but not dark; he's kept his promise.

Bo emerges from the kitchen, which is the only lighted part of the house. Stands there in the archway, hovering, unsure.

"Gabby won't be calling me no more," he states. Quiet, worried. Nervous, maybe.

Luke nods about that one and stays where he is, too, leaning against the smooth wood of the closed front door. Looks off into the darkness of his living room for a minute, then back at Bo. "I'm sorry," he says.

Bo's head shakes. Sad, that's the look of it. "I ain't gonna miss her none."

"I know that," Luke agrees, because he does. He knows that right now, in this moment, Bo's heart's not broken over the loss of Gabriela, but because Luke all but sent him after that stack of black and white photos of him and Anita, taken by her bartender friend Brian, who aspired to greater things, like becoming the next Ansel Adams. Shot after shot taken of a loving couple, smiling, holding hands, staring into each other's eyes, Luke kissing her… at least she kept the majority of them. Still, the sampling Bo must have sat on the couch and worked his way through was a cruel punishment for Luke to have imposed on him.

He doesn't say anything more; enough words got said this morning for the whole week, as far as Luke's concerned. He just stays where he is, braced against the door, and reaches out an arm. Bo's there in a second, close and hot, holding onto him with near violent intensity.

He doesn't cry, but Bo does, and it's the flawless ending to a perfectly lousy day.


	27. Sleeping on the Couch

Sleeping on the Couch

"You," he informs Luke when he pulls back. Hands still on those tense shoulders, he's not ready to let go all the way, not yet. But he can't stand here hiding his face in the crook of his cousin's neck all night, smelling cigar smoke mixed with foot powder and wondering what in hell Luke got up to today. "Need to get some sleep tonight."

He gets a look that silently points out how Luke's not the one who just spent the last few minutes bawling on his cousin's shoulder, but it wasn't exhaustion that made Bo do that. Something closer to relief, maybe, that Luke came home like he promised, and that the first words out of his mouth had nothing to do with packing or booking flights. That sense of reprieve was a fool's hope more than anything; Luke hasn't given any indication that Bo's actually forgiven. More than likely it just means he could hear Jesse in head, threatening midnight chores if they couldn't find a civil word to say to each other before sundown. Or worse, his cousin's brain has just reenacted all those times he was forced to stare into Bo's wet eyes, and listen to a litany of _just look at how bad you hurt him, Luke _when, really, they'd been equally to blame. Luke and his temper took more than their fair share of any responsibility when it came to squabbles amongst the young Duke boys.

"Tell the truth," he says, letting his hands fall away from the warmth of the body under them. Regrets the need, because he has no idea how long it'll be before Luke's ready to be touched again, but there's no hope of honesty as long as he stands that close. Chances don't get a lot better by him stepping back and away, but he does it anyway, because Luke needs him to. "When was the last time you got a decent night?"

Guessing into the silence Luke leaves him with, tiny shrug there to indicate he's not even going to begin to calculate, Bo reckons it was probably before they left Hazzard. At least a couple of nights before, because he knows Luke didn't sleep much after the day they argued and Bo took to the couch. And in the week since, there's been camping, nightmares, and Bo pressuring him with kisses, followed by worrying over wanting what he most likely reckons he's not entitled to, then rolling over in the night and sneaking a taste of it anyway. Then last night, oh, Bo figures Luke couldn't have closed his eyes for even a minute of it, working out what he was going to ask for, what he was going to give. The look to him this morning when Bo found him in his office was beyond exhausted, and still he went off all day to do anything but rest.

Unlike Bo, who had lain down on the couch in the wake of Luke's exit, uncomfortable and taking it out on the cushions for their thoughtlessness, poking at him when all he wanted was to find some kind of solace there. Up then, and into that little office of Luke's where a cold cup of coffee accused him of everything from cowardice to infidelity, crumbs on a plate mocking his procrastination. So he sat down and picked up the phone, put it down. Picked up Luke's dishes instead and carried them back to the kitchen, because he couldn't do this with witnesses there staring at him in reminder of how his cousin hadn't even bothered to wash them before taking those dangerously sad blue eyes of his right out the door. So he washed away all their righteous indictment of him, then went back to the office. Funny how the moisture left his mouth, and echo of the morning when Luke told him what he wanted. Picked up the phone.

Picked up the photo next to it, in its rough-hewn frame. Proud boys they were, young and so sure of themselves. Owning nothing more than the dirt under their fingernails and the car they were leaning on, but pretty sure it didn't matter one damn bit. All grown up, or in his case, trying to play the part, face working out a serious look instead of a boyish grin. Last year's jeans too tight across the front, greasy brown t-shirt pulled snug over his chest that was puffed out like a bantam rooster, ready to take on the world. But Luke, well, Luke already had the world licked by then. Cool without effort, blue jeans loose around his military-thin frame, shirt open and hanging from his strong shoulders. Not smiling, but not pretending at seriousness either. Little twist to his lip, meant to be a smirk maybe, but it's not. More like a challenge to the camera – come and get me if you dare. Not all that different from that look on his face this morning, right before he confessed to what he wanted, intensity there that made Bo shiver even before the words were out of his mouth.

Damn time for being such a nasty trickster. Years of nothing much at all, other than getting arrested every other week, jumping over creeks, rivers, cars and houses in the General Lee, nearly getting killed a time or two. And after that, an equal amount of years on opposite sides of the country, just a tinny phone line and the occasional holiday between them. Even following that first kiss, lost somewhere out in abandoned fields of their own county, there were years of nothing at all. In the past week, all of that nothing has disappeared behind a mountain of progress, only to be leveled in seconds by an unnatural disaster. The kind he'd like to blame on some hopeful girl out in L.A., dreaming of picket fences and knee-high, toddling, blonde brats, but he can't. It's his own mess.

Throat so raw he'd barely manage a squeak if even if he could see to dial the phone, he stumbled out of the office and back to the bedroom. Dirty sheets, but he crawled under them on the side Luke seemed to favor, and let the pillowcase catch whatever moisture leaked out from his eyes. At some point, spent, he must've fallen asleep.

And when he woke up, he stripped out of Luke's clothes, and found a full ensemble of his own. Took a shower and scrubbed away every trace of evidence from the morning, even the bits he might have remembered fondly. Got dressed, stripped the bed, threw the sheets and their few dirty clothes in. Luke, had they still been on speaking terms, might have been proud of his efficiency. Back into that little office and dialing the phone before he could think any better of it. _It was fun, sweetheart, but I think we should see other people. _The words of an idiot sixteen-year-old who's just caught sight of a new pair of tits. To her credit, she didn't cry or beg, just gave him an _I see, call me if you change your mind_, and fumbled her way off the phone.

Lunch, Luke might have been interested to notice, had he not been out there somewhere reminding himself how this whole thing with Bo had been a fool's idea to begin with, consisted of peanut butter and jelly. And how his slob of a cousin wasted no time afterward in washing every dish he'd used, followed by any others that could be deemed dirty by virtue of being out of place. Dried them, stacked them into cupboards, closed the doors. No sign that anyone had ever been anywhere near Luke's kitchen all day.

Off to the bedroom to tuck away any stray clothing, just waiting for the wash cycle to end. Sheets in the dryer, he turned to fixing up Luke's office, but figured he'd do best to leave the untidy shelves be. So he settled on his nemesis, the couch that wouldn't let him rest, to wait for the clothes to dry. Discovered, upon sitting there in the full light of day for maybe the first time, the photo hanging over the archway into the kitchen. Enlarged, grainy, slightly out-of-focus, the Duke family of four, carefully arranged on the porch of the old farmhouse. That photo was memorable, taken by Mary Kaye Porter to thank them for helping her steal money from a gangster, back in the day when Jesse's moral disposition could spin a man's head around faster than his one-eighty proof moonshine. Sun bleached hair hung in his eyes, but then Luke's was longer then, too. For once there's some distance between the two of them, with Bo sitting in front with Daisy and Luke standing behind them both with Jesse. One of those days when his big cousin was practicing to take over as leader of the family, probably. He did that a lot back then, which was why Bo had to go jumping the General over every obstacle in sight, just to keep the boy from growing up too fast. Seems like Luke ought to have thanked him, but unless Bo was willing to count rolled eyes and some kind of secret sign of gratitude, he never did.

Dirty, peeling paint on the walls of the house behind them, and damn if it didn't look like home. Jesse staring straight into the camera like he didn't fully trust its intentions, or maybe it was just the way his formal clothes reigned him in, stiff and imposing, exactly how Bo remembered him looking back in the days when whippings were more than threats and could leave welts behind. Serious old man eyes, mocking him now over a rebuilt house that somehow stopped being a home the minute the gaps between boards got closed. Reminding him, also, that girls would come and go, but Luke would always be his cousin.

_But Jesse, _he thought,_ is this what you had in mind? For all the girls to be gone, leaving just me and Luke?_ Probably not. There he was, pinned up on the wall, undoubtedly glaring down at them both for letting it come to this.

Still, for all the stern words and harsh lashes, the man always listened to whatever stupid confessions they were brave enough to make, and gave his very best, rough-edged, advice.

_So what do I do now?_ No answer.

Nasty time, slowing down again, after Luke walked out. Dryer turning lazy loops and he couldn't walk out the door until it was done. No particular destination in mind, just out and away…

From that damned closet. Under the blankets. A small stack of papers, weighing nothing, and yet, when he'd given up and dug them out, they'd crushed him. A birthday card full of romantic sentiment, signed _I love you, always and forever, Anita_. A letter he must've received after she left, just about begging Luke to get himself transferred to the southeastern branch of the Forest Service. And photos. Professional-looking things, except they weren't taken in any kind of a studio. Intimate feel to them, and he reckoned that most of them got taken right here on Luke's property. Outside, some of them, sun glowing behind a couple strolling the ridge, hand-in-hand. On the porch, cuddling close and kissing. And near the bottom, the one that tied his throat up into a knot again, taken right here on this couch. Luke with a guitar in his hands, but not playing. Couldn't be, not with the way Anita was practically in his lap, kissing him. One of those moments where, it's clear, the two subjects have forgotten the existence of the camera altogether. Intimate little bubble, and Bo wondered what it would be like to just about crawl into Luke's lap with no second thoughts. Might be the kind of thing he never got the chance to do.

Buzzing alarm punctuated the thought, and the damn dryer was finally done. Sheets back on the bed, stack of papers back under the blankets in the closet, but the notion of a walk was lost, drained away with his energy. So he sat on the porch swing and watched the arc of the sun until his eyes closed again, and if he didn't sleep, he at least rested. Stiff backside when he rose from where he'd been still too long, and he got to wondering all over again about Luke, and whether more than his heart was hurting. Hard to say – his stubborn cousin would never admit a damned thing.

Dinner. If Luke would be home at dark, he'd also be hungry, so that was the next task Bo set himself to. Listened to the air around him, because there was no C.B. to call for Luke on, and no matter what frequency he tried to tune his brain to, there was no Luke. Opened a window, even if it did let the chill in, so he could listen better.

And when he heard the approaching motor, saw the headlights swing across the front of the house, the crunching gravel and the smell of exhaust, he almost wished his cousin away again. No idea how this was going to go, but he figured that at least all of his clothes were clean, if Luke asked him to start packing them tonight.

The apology caught him off guard. When it came to Gabby, Luke had nothing to be sorry for. She'd been Bo's mistake right from the word go, and that didn't stop being the case just because he'd been forced to face her with bad news this morning. But that look, that arm reaching for him – Luke _was_ sorry. So Bo went to him with some intent to reassure, but that knot that he'd been swallowing down for the better part of the day came loose the minute he felt Luke's right arm tighten around his waist, and that wide, warm left hand found its way into his hair.

That release is in the past now, and Luke still looks just as miserably exhausted as he did when Bo first found him in the morning. Deeply etched lines of his face disappearing into the beard below, but Bo knows that hollow-cheeked look, has seen it at all the worst moments of his cousin's life.

"Dinner's going to take another fifteen minutes," he says. "You can go get cleaned up if you want." _And wash the stink of your day away, because I don't want to picture where you've been. Smoky lodge where blonde waitresses aspire to become great recording artists, but only after they've crawled right into your lap._

"Dinner?" Luke says, and that skeptical eyebrow's up again.

"Meatloaf," he answers. "If I'd started sooner I might have had time for barbequed pork." That right there is just bragging or temptation, maybe a promise. Keep me around, Luke, I've learned a few tricks since we've been apart.

Luke's head shakes as he walks off to the back of the house. By the time he comes back, face hair shining with water (odd how the wet curls at his temples and on his cheeks make him look vulnerable and small) dinner's on the table. Serving plate, because Luke seems so fond of using one, is in the middle of the table, flanked by plates, cups and silverware. For the first time since he's been here, he chooses the seat across the table from his cousin. He reckons the man doesn't much feel like sitting shoulder to shoulder tonight.

Clinks and scrapes of forks on plates; Luke dutifully praises his cooking, but doesn't ask where he learned it. Just as well, neither of them wants to talk about it. Back to the sounds of chewing and swallowing.

"Daisy," Bo says, because he has to say something. "I talked to her yesterday. She sends her love."

Quiet nod to that. "We should call her."

"She'll wait." Until they're over this hump, anyway. She might not like it, but she'll wait.

More silence to fill in the gap where the last stretch of it left off.

"Luke," he starts. Those blue eyes fix on him again, get in the way of his intent. He might have begged for more communication from the man, but the look there is just as haunting as it was in the morning. "You need sleep. I—I can sleep on the couch." Because everything in Luke's posture says he's not ready to be that close to Bo yet.

Luke picks up his empty plate instead of answering him, takes it to the sink and stands there, back to him.

"Couch ain't long enough for you Bo," he tells the sink, or the glass of the windows, or maybe the road out in front.

This is the same man that offered himself up this morning, who apologized for actions about which he bore no blame, and reached out an arm to comfort a man that didn't deserve it. No way in hell is he sleeping on the couch, too.

"I said," Bo counters, grabbing his own plate and joining Luke at the sink. "I got the couch."

Luke turns on the water. "Don't be a fool, Bo. I done slept on the couch before, and I can do it again." Dish under the stream, and Bo hands him the sponge.

"You're tired, Luke." Pale, vacant almost. Exhausted. "I ain't, not really. I… slept some, today. When you was out."

Luke reaches out for Bo's plate after stacking his own in the drainer. He hands it over then heads back to the table to start bringing the rest of the dishes to the sink.

"You also done some work around here, I see. You didn't have to, you know." Soapy hand out, Luke wants the glasses.

"Just a sec." He's got to put down the half-eaten main course, first. "Where's the lid?" To the large CorningWare he used to bake the meatloaf. There's enough to have it another day, if he can figure out how to put it away.

"I don't know," Luke answers. "You was the one who used it last."

Right, he put a covered meatloaf in the oven, then took the lid off to see how it was coming along—yep, there's the missing cookware, still sitting in the cooling oven.

"Watch yourself," Luke says when he has to snatch his fingers back from it, then blow on them after trying to lift it without a potholder.

"Got it," he answers back, because it didn't really hurt all that much, and he's able to retrieve it on the second try, now that he knows the pain's coming.

By this time Luke has gotten the glasses himself, has them halfway washed. Only a serving plate and silverware left to go.

"I do so," Bo says, handing off each item as Luke indicates it's wanted. "Got to do whatever work needs doing around here. Most of what I done was just cleaning up after myself." Funny how Luke doesn't argue against that idea. "And I still ain't half as tired as you." He catches the reflection of Luke's eyes in the windows; funny how it's so much easier to talk to a ghost of his cousin than the man himself. "So you take the bed."

Dishes done now, Luke's drying his hands on the seat of his pants. Aunt Lavinia would swat him for that, but after his insistence on serving plates and organized cupboards, Bo's just glad to see some remnant of the younger man Luke used to be.

"I done told you," Luke says, turning around and heading out of the kitchen. Light snaps off, leaving Bo to follow behind him in the dark. Out into the living room, and down on the couch with a deliberate sort of a plop. "I got the couch."

No light other than what the moon's generating out there, but from the tone of Luke's voice, Bo would bet he's got that same, silly, stubborn jut to his chin that he gets whenever they've gotten involved in pointless arguments like this.

Bo reckons it was cheating, hustling out here to sit on the offending piece of furniture first, not so much as a 'start your engines' for warning. So he plants himself right next to Luke, chin up in equal measure. "You only got half the couch, Luke. I got the other half."

If they were younger, if the day had been easier, they would wrestle for it, turn the damned furniture right over and leave it upended so neither of them could have it.

Instead, Luke snorts at him, then sits back, tipping his head to rest it on the cushions behind him. "If you want the couch, you can have it," he allows. "But when you figure out how it's too short for you, and how it's kind of lumpy in all the wrong places, and you want to come join me in the bed—that's all right, too."

And then his cousin gets up and leaves him to work it out for himself.


	28. Right or Stubborn

Right or Stubborn

Bo's either right or he's stubborn, and since Luke can't face the thought of the former being true, he opts to believe the latter. Besides, the very fact that he has achieved sleep before he feels Bo's presence there, hovering at the other side of the bed, shivering in the chill of the night but not climbing under the covers – that muzzy sense of being half-awake can be blamed for any lack of clarity on the subject.

"Get in the bed, Bo," he mumbles, waits to hear the creak of springs and feel the pull of the quilt rising and settling over his cousin's frame before letting himself fall back into unconsciousness.

Time passes, no idea how much of it, before he achieves some semblance of awareness again. Big toe scratches at an itch that has blossomed up on his calf and might even be the reason he's halfway awake. Opens his eyes to see the tense body perched on the far rim of the mattress. Typical blonde logic about how he's as close to the couch as he can get, and still be under the warm covers. And he might not have gotten any more lucid in his thought processes, but his cousin's become a lot more serious, at least when it comes to sticking to his convictions, however odd they may be.

"Bo." Tongue stuck on the back of his teeth, but he's been saying that name in the middle of the night for most of his life; sheer force of habit makes it coherent. "Best get some sleep. You have to change the oil in my Jeep tomorrow."

Yeah, that makes the man roll over so he can try to get a look at Luke's face in the dark. On his back, hand up, probably rubbing at his eyes. For all his claims of sleeping so much lately, that little gesture reveals that a few more hours wouldn't do him any harm. "Why do I got to do it?"

"Because," and this is only logical, no reason for Bo to go questioning him. "I said so." There's some serious consideration going on over there, and Luke's too tired to wait it out all the way to whatever brilliant conclusion his cousin's going to come to. "Besides, I reckon if my oil was changed we could go for a drive. It's about time you learned where things are." So he can go out and buy his own buttermilk, if he's of a mind. Luke's not going to indulge that little craving more than the once he already has. "Just go to sleep, Bo." Closes his eyes to demonstrate how it's done.

But there's still tension in the springs between them, so he waits for it. "Luke," comes just as he's getting ready to give up. "I hurt you? This morning, I mean."

"I'm fine," is his immediate answer to that question. Because he is, no permanent damage of any kind has been done, not a scratch on him, and if there's a bruise, it'll heal. "Sleep," he orders; it's that time of night when one-word sentences are all the effort he wants to put out.

It's plenty light the next time he wakes up, and that's the nail on the coffin of his lost sleep. Still, his nag of a cousin, finally sound asleep on the other side of the bed, would be glad to hear that he feels comparatively rested.

Chilly, even for a Montana April morning, and it's a good thing that stubbornness himself over there didn't make Luke come after him last night to drag him in here where the blankets, at least, are warm. The floor, on the other hand, is the kind of numbing that soaks right up through the rug he placed here years ago when he chose this side of the bed for sleeping on. Bo's side, he realizes, has nothing at all to mitigate the cold; he'll have to remember to fix that. Meanwhile, he reckons that seeing his breath in the air is no excuse for spending the day on his back, so he slides out from between the sheets, leaving Bo to make up for as much lost sleep from the night before as he can.

A robe isn't going to do it this morning, so he goes straight for his warmer clothes: jeans, shirt, and that flannel thing Bo's been wearing but must have washed yesterday. Socks and boots, because his first order of business takes him outside. After, that is, tracking down the source of the inside chill; Bo must've opened a kitchen window last night and forgotten to close it. Oh, well, he's already paid the price for that, spending however many hours he actually did out on the couch last night.

Nippy start to the day, but clear, and it always surprises him how, on mornings like this, there's not much of a frost coating. It's not the humid east, where the slightest chill sucks the water right out of the air to lay it down in crystals dotting the grass. Always makes him second guess the temperature, but specifics don't matter right now. It's more important to select a few logs for the fire than to debate with himself whether it's cold enough to light one. Bo's not used to this kind of weather even in January, which this isn't. Summer definitely had designs on overtaking Georgia on the day they left.

Late season fire, not much wood left, but there's enough. He'll have to remember to pick up a cord later, and deal with Bo's taunts for buying what they used to chop. This right here isn't Hazzard, and he doesn't have acres of wooded land on which trees fall at the rate of at least four per year.

Besides, it's not like he's buying a fire, exactly, just the fuel. There remains a certain amount of patience and skill needed in order to build a warm, crackling blaze in only a few minutes, and Luke's still one of the best he knows at doing that. And once he's satisfied with his handiwork there in the stone fireplace that reminds him more of Hazzard than any other part of this cabin, there's coffee. And oatmeal, which may not exactly be fried chicken or meatloaf, but it's still food that requires cooking. He doesn't buy that instant stuff either.

He settles in front of his computer, bowl of oatmeal balanced on his knee, navigating through weather websites, looking at predicted rainfall for the spring, and estimated temperature for the summer. The younger boys in the service swear by this, and Luke has to admit that it serves a certain purpose, like confirming his prediction that Yellowstone is at greatest risk this year. But it's nothing compared to good old instinct. That and sniffing the air, because in truth, where there's smoke, there's fire. That right there is the wisdom of Uncle Jesse, which his team of kids never got the firsthand benefit of. And if they did they'd only meet each other's eyes and snicker just like he and Bo did half the time.

He's comparing his own predictions to those of the National Weather Service when Bo shows up, fully dressed and in sock feet. Damn it, he'd meant to move the rug over to his cousin's side of the bed so the man wouldn't have to put his feet down on that miserable hardwood floor, but he got distracted by his own morning routine. At least, he thinks, the fire has warmed the whole house considerably from when he got up.

But if Bo's not huddled up in a blanket and complaining of cold, he still doesn't look happy. More like nervous, unsure. Like he reckons that Luke's been picking up more voicemail messages from old flames and working himself up into another rage.

"Morning," he greets, trying to wipe that worry off of his cousin's face. "There's oatmeal warming on the stove." Considers a joke about how he didn't have any ex-girlfriends teaching him how to cook it either, but he figures that kind of thing can't be said so close on the heels of yesterday. "Coffee, too."

"Thanks," Bo mumbles, and heads off in that direction with Luke following. Somehow, over the past few years, he's taken to eating too many meals in front of the danged computer screen, but that's the habit of a man with no one to talk to. They were both raised better than that; meals should be eaten together, allowing no distractions. He settles at the kitchen table, waits for Bo to join him. Hot oatmeal, cold buttermilk, and his cousin sitting across from him, just like last night. Hard to keep a man company when all of his attention's focused on the food in front of him, and Luke's got nothing left in his own bowl, so after a minute he puts his dishes in the sink and returns to the stove. Heating whole milk, adding powder, and in the end he brings Bo some hot cocoa. Man never has much cared for coffee.

"You'll need it," he warns, as he sets the mug down in front of his cousin. "It'll keep you warm while you're changing the oil."

Bo looks up at him; seems like he's only now remembering what passed for last night's pillow talk. "Thanks," he says again, accepting the cocoa. But if the steaming liquid warms Bo's tongue, it doesn't loosen it. Eating is a silent prospect. Aunt Lavinia would be proud how, some thirty-odd years after her last lesson on the subject, Bo has finally learned not to talk with his mouth full. Still eats like a half-starved mule, going back for seconds, but that's fine with Luke. Best they finish up all the oatmeal between them; the refrigerator's already got plenty of leftovers in it. And when the pot's empty and his belly's full, Bo says, "Oatmeal was good," which maybe counts as his first whole sentence of the morning. Up and leaving his dishes in the sink before disappearing to the back of the house. Luke's trying to remember whether or not he has a thermometer to stick in his cousin's mouth when the man returns with his boots on.

"Guess I ought to get after that oil change," he announces, heading toward the door.

"Bo," _I was kidding_, he wants to say, but the earnest look in the eyes that meet his stops his tongue. This is Bo Duke, earning his keep, making himself useful, reminding Luke that he's not the lazy kid cousin he used to be. "Here," Luke says, slipping out of the flannel shirt he's been wearing since he got up this morning. "It's colder'n you think out there; you'll want this." Watches as his cousin nods his thanks, puts it on, then steps out the door.

_It smells like you. I like it._


	29. Just Normal

Just Normal

There was an hour, more or less, when he could have been happy. Not silly, Christmas morning, look-what-Santa-brought-me happy, which is known to only last until about noon when visiting begins, and neighbors no one's ever liked show up to eat the pies and brag over their own Santa-gotten gains. Not giddy, beer-running-through-his-hair-and-into-his-eyes happy, trophy getting handed off to him because he managed to outdrive some of the biggest names in the business. Not happy like kissing Luke, but happy like loving Luke, and getting loved right back, happy like having assembled all the pieces of his life that have always been right in front of him, yet somehow scattered into a random pattern. There was an hour when he could have held onto that perfect collection of everything he's ever wanted, buried his face in the softness and felt the warmth of it close to his heart, but he slept right through it. And woke up to a sadness that's been dragging him down for a full day.

Used to be, when they were kids and Jesse's eyes would hold about a tenth of the sorrow Luke's did yesterday morning, followed by the old man pronouncing himself broken-hearted with disappointment at the behavior of his beloved boys, there was a price to pay. A whipping, extra chores, and lingering sense of shame to be lived through. Lasted all of an hour, maybe a whole afternoon if it was a truly serious transgression.

The Duke boys were raised the same, though Luke caught more of those mournful looks, took more licks from the whip (then again, he all but stuck his hind end out and pointed to where Jesse ought to whip him, so it's not like the result was unexpected), spent more time out of their uncle's good graces. Still his cousin's always had that same rhythm about him, staying angry at Bo as long as it takes to utter his snide sarcasms, or maybe trade a few punches. Punishment doled out in exchange for grudges getting dropped, a primitive means of paying for whatever crimes Luke might perceive that he committed.

But that barter system is crude, dating back to when the cycle of their days rather resembled old cowboy movies, routine, unfolding with black-and-white simplicity. Do chores, band together to fight the system, off to the Boar's Nest to find girls to celebrate with, more chores, and off to bed. Beds, two separate beds, not like now where they're suddenly sharing the one and though Luke has invited him in, Bo's not sure he wants to sleep there anymore.

His cousin's right about the cold, worse today than it's been all along, weaving its way through the fibers of Luke's flannel shirt. Pulls it tight across his chest as he stands there in the shed, lost. He came for something, and he'll work out what it is, if he can stop thinking about Luke for all of a second.

"Bo," which is going to be impossible, now. Apparently the man has decided to come and retrieve his lost little cousin, just like he used to get sent to do when a young Bo wandered too far, out to where the trees and stones stopped being familiar. "Socket wrench is in the toolbox over there." On the shelf under the small window, right. That's one of the things he came after.

"You ski?" he asks; when he thinks about it, it was the two pairs of skis hung on the wall toward the back there that caused his attention to drift.

"It's Montana. Everyone skis," comes the answer as Luke goes on past him to get the toolbox himself. Bo holds out his hand for it; he's going to keep his word about changing that oil.

"You any good?" Of course he's good, Luke's never had any problem learning anything that requires speed or agility.

His cousin's playing at modest, though. "I ain't broken nothing yet."

Bo nods some on that, wonders how many skis one man needs anyway. "Think you could teach me how?"

"Wrong season, Bo. I don't expect enough snow will fall down here this time of year. Maybe if we went up north to Kalispell or something."

They've stood here in this shed long enough, he reckons, time to get to work. Oh, right. "I was also looking for the drip pan." The oil and filter were still sitting in the tailgate of the Jeep from when Luke bought them, presenting an easy find.

"Right there," is the answer, his cousin pointing to a spot not a foot from Bo's boot sole. "If it was a snake it would have bit you." _Wake up, Bo._

He's wide awake, though, that's not the issue here. It's just that thinking and problem solving have always been Luke's skills. He doesn't like working over the same old ground, looking for solutions where right now there are only obstacles. Doesn't come easily, doesn't flow smoothly through his mind.

He might just have had a chance to work things through if Luke left him to the oil change, but in truth, there was no reason to expect he would. Any maintenance that Bo has ever done on a Duke-owned car has happened with Luke looking over his shoulder. Still, he knows his cousin won't follow him underneath the frame of the Jeep, even if he does stand right over the open hood. A good ton of metal between them, and Luke's talking right through it.

"You ain't," the man's saying. "Got to go doing chores here, Bo. You ain't got no keep to earn." Bo hears the words, but he doesn't exactly have any kind of an answer to them. "I invited you here; you're my guest." Stilted speech the likes of which Jesse would have given to their more distant relatives.

"I don't want to be your guest, Luke," he tells the engine between them. Watches his cousin's ankles as he walks around the hood, fidgeting with whatever wires he reckons got loosened when Bo popped the latch, maybe, then focuses back on the nut in front of him.

"Use the three-eighths," comes the suggestion for which socket wrench he should grab. "What do you want to be then?"

Same thing he's always been, maybe. Pest, thorn in Luke's side, recipient of those looks that mock him. Loved, but without pain. For all the years he felt frustrated at his distant cousin, angry, resentful that the man could kiss him once, then go right back to his life here in Montana without giving any indication that it mattered a lot to him, last night marks the first time he wished he could take it back. Return to those days just after the 1997 Hazzard-wide reunion, after the whole county got shocked by Rosco's ability to out-scheme a schemer, then by Daisy and Enos' second failed wedding. Just him and Luke in the General, but this time he wouldn't stop out there in the old Miller's field, he'd push right across to that ditch on the far side and jump it, just to hear Luke complain about his impending death. _If_, he'd undo their first kiss _if_ it would take away the look in Luke's eyes from yesterday, the one that's not entirely gone by this morning.

"Just normal," he answers.

"Normal," get snorted right back at him. "Bo, get up here."

Might as well, the plug's out, filter's off, oil is draining. No excuse to be under the car anymore. A hand comes down to help him up, no choice but to take it, even if it does bring him to his feet right there in front of his cousin, closer than he wants to be. Two hands on his shoulders, holding him steady there, reminds him of childhood days when his cousin picked him up after chin-jarring falls. Gentle, worried, that's the look to those eyes now.

"I reckon," Luke starts, shakes his head, but the next words are just repeats of what he's already said. "I reckon it wasn't fair for me to tell you where to find them pictures of me and Anita, Bo. What you did, saving them messages, that was a mistake. What I did, it was wrong. All right?"

No, he's not all right. Luke's finally put a fine point on it for him, what's been under his skin since yesterday afternoon.

"Luke," he tries to look away, but his cousin uses a wrist against Bo's chin to keep him focused forward. Same kind of _talk to me_ approach Jesse always took. "When you was with Anita, she ever – she stay over here?"

The grip on his shoulders tightens. Luke knows what he's asking, and his fingers provide all the answer Bo needs. Doesn't stop his cousin's tongue though. "Sometimes."

Seconds of nothing but Luke's hands kneading at his shoulders.

"Bo, I reckon that there ain't no reason to go looking back." A sigh, Luke's frustrated, but it's nothing he plans to take out on Bo. No sarcasm, no rolled eyes, just fingers digging into shoulders then releasing; thankfully the flannel shirt provides a bit of a buffer against those strong hands. "We both been with more girls than we can count, even stayed with a couple, here and there. I guess," another pause there, another few seconds for Bo to hate this conversation before it picks up again. "We're better people, maybe, for what we done with them. Or what we learned by being with them. I reckon Anita taught me not to walk away from love. I ain't sure what Gabriela taught you, but there must be something."

"I can count to five in Spanish," is a joke that doesn't belong between the words Luke's trying to say. Neither of them even bothers to smile about it.

"You can't go sleeping on the couch every night any more than I can tell you that ain't no old girlfriend ever allowed to leave you a message. I expect one or another will call from time to time."

"Most of them ain't got no real interest in talking to me," Bo assures him. "I don't figure it'll happen too often."

"We can flip the mattress," Luke suggests. "If it'll help."

It won't, Bo just reckons he'd better stop caring about what Luke and Anita must've done on that bed of his cousin's. Makes it easier to consider doing when Luke's hands come off his shoulders, one pulling gently at the back of his neck. Quick look down toward the road, then Luke's kissing him. Sweet little thing that doesn't last long before his cousin's backing away. Doesn't get far, Bo grabs hold of his elbow with one hand, other one cupping in those dark curls, pulling until their foreheads meet. Frozen like that, all but his fingers making small movements through Luke's hair.

"I'm sorry, Bo." But that part's already been said before.

"Me too," that's the thing he forgot to say to Luke last night. Pause there, just quiet air, warmed by their breath.

One more kiss, then Luke pulls back. "Get back under there and put that plug in so's we can go out for a drive."

— — — —

"That, over there, is the Anaconda stack." Tall chimney of some sort that Luke's pointing to out his own window. Industrial looking thing, but there's no factory around it. "You can see it from most anywhere, and it's about a mile from here back to my place." Right, Luke's cabin is just southwest of that peak over there; his cousin doesn't have to go acting like he's the only one with a powerful sense of direction developed on dark nights, driving through deer paths and wilderness at high speed with a revenuer biting at their tailpipe.

"What's it for?" Seems like a chimney of that size ought to have a purpose, other than being a beacon so out-of-town visitors can find Luke Duke's cabin.

"Used to be a copper smelter," his tour guide informs him. "They shut it down sometime back and leveled the plant. But they saved the stack, and now that's state land around it. You okay?" Luke adds when he catches Bo yawning.

"Fine," he answers. He has always yawned his way through history lessons.

"It's the altitude," Luke announces, making Bo wonder what height has to do with copper. "Making you want to sleep so much."

"We ain't that high." Hell, they grew up hiking higher mountains than what surrounds them right now.

"About a mile up," he gets informed. "Don't look like it, but yeah, we're about a thousand feet higher than Big Frog," which was the highest peak they used to cross on certain long-distance moonshine runs. Used to camp up there sometimes, too, and it felt like the top of the world. "Them mountains you see there," on the far side of the smoke stack, not much more than hills in the foreground, but they build up pretty good. "Go up over ten thousand feet. Don't worry, you'll get used to it soon."

"Ain't you got no trees?" he asks, because the altitude doesn't matter to him half as much as the fact that the landscape is so barren.

He gets smirked at for that. "You get used to that too," Luke tells him. "We'll go to town; you can see the state forest from there."

"We already been to town," Bo reminds him. Bleak place, five block radius of square, wood-frame houses stacked on top of each other, broken up by the occasional dry goods store or laundromat. Smaller than Hazzard without half the charm.

"Anaconda," Luke corrects. "Just up the road and bigger. It's a resort area come winter and ski season, so it's actually kind of pretty."

He quickly learns that his cousin's right about that. The buildings here are brick, not wood, and make a nice contrast with the green of fir trees he can see in the distance. Solid appearance to the place, not the half-abandoned look of Opportunity. And then there's the fact that there are people in town, walking from here to there, and that alone is an improvement over the rest of what he's seen in this state so far. Funny how he and Luke used to wander off into the Georgia wilderness to find some peace and quiet, but here in the empty west he reckons they ought to go out of their way to spend more time in town.

Luke cruises through streets he obviously knows well, making turns that mean nothing in particular to Bo. Off the main road, across some railroad tracks, into a lot, where he pulls to a stop. Hand hesitating over the keys as Bo looks at the building in front of them. Yellow brick, square like a school, concrete steps and a glass door. Long about the time Bo's recognizing the insignia on the glass, Luke finally turns the Jeep off.

"Let's see who's here," he says. At the Anaconda Branch Office of the United States Forest Service.


	30. Tall Tales and Tough Decisions

Tall Tales and Tough Decisions

"The groove was high, but I got under him anyway." Sounds like Bo's doing all right up there in the front office, indulging himself in that little twist on Duke honesty that Jesse instilled in them every bit as much as he did the regular kind: tall tale telling. "Track was pretty green, too."

Yep, Bo's in top form, and it's an improvement over the way he got hit at the door by Wiggins announcing that he didn't look anything like the pictures in Luke's wallet. And while that's only the perspective of a kid that's seen photos taken before he was even born, of a Bo Duke with white-blond hair falling into his eyes, it didn't cheer the man up when Luke explained how even his kid cousin had to grow up _sometime_.

Only Wiggins and Marks were here when they arrived, but it sounds like Bo's got a pretty impressive audience in there by now. Seems likely that one of Luke's pups called the others to come on in and meet the famous NASCAR driver, but there's more than one team of boys out there now. Appears that his impressive cousin has pulled in some of the kids from Morton's team, too. An okay group of boys they are, but they lack the cohesiveness of team Duke.

That, of course, was why Rico called him back to his office again, for another closed door meeting rife with reminders about how the end of the month was less than ten days away. Meant leaving Bo up front with the boys, and if there was that same old lip-licking nervousness to his cousin at the threat of being left alone with kids, he seems to have adjusted. Besides, Luke's team is a heck of a lot better behaved than the Hazzard orphans that used to go clinging to Bo's hands like they could see he was just an overgrown four-year-old himself.

"Of course, my spotter kept telling me how there were marbles down there." Bo's laying it on extra thick; seems like it's about time Luke got back to him. It's not like his conversation with Rico had anyplace to go anyway, what with the way this decision's hanging there under Luke's skin, itching like infection and refusing to be made. "But I knew I could handle it." Sure he could, eyes closed and one hand behind his back. Except the story seems to lack the part about how the amazing Bo Duke has lost control of more than one car when pulling that exact same maneuver, sustaining the kind of damage that took him out of contention, and even rolling himself right out of the race that one time. NASCAR, and this really shouldn't be the continual surprise that it seems to be to Bo, is not Hazzard County, where everyone knows to stay out of the way when they hear the roar of a stock car engine, and where luck exists in equal measure to the ineptitude of the law.

It might be time to put a stop to this little story-telling session; then again, before he can do more than get into the front office with the whole gang of them, Conklin's tugging on his arm, asking for a few minutes of his time. He has a passing thought about how Bo didn't really want to be left alone with the guys for very long, but a glance in his cousin's direction reveals the man to be too engrossed in the adulation of young boys to realize that they make him nervous. So he tips his head at his cousin – _I'll be right back_ – and follows Conklin out the concrete steps. Boy lights a cigarette, and the two of them perform their usual ritual in which Luke rolls his eyes about the damage the kid's doing to his lungs, and Conklin ignores the gesture because he's all of twenty-three and completely immortal. Same kind of exchanges him and Bo used to have just before the blonde wonder would floor the accelerator and fly over some open ditch. Bo's still alive and healthy and approaching twice Conklin's age; he hopes the same will be true of the kid in front of him.

"Got me a job offer," Conklin announces. "Back home."

"Yeah?" Funny, he never knew the kid was looking, and he likes to think he's got a reasonable idea of what his men are thinking, even before they say it out loud. Then again, he left here two months ago, closing out one season without signing his contract for the upcoming one. First time he's ever done that, and he should have figured that would shake some of the guys up. "You gonna take it?"

"I haven't made up my mind just yet," the lanky boy answers. Luke keeps expecting those shoulders of Conklin's to bulk out some – the kid's not exactly a weakling – but it seems like all of his body mass went into growing tall and just stayed there. "It's a Lieutenant position."

Luke whistles his amazement at the rank that is rarely afforded to young men like Conklin. Then again, the kid's a jumper with two good years under his belt. Probably makes him more skilled than anyone else in his tiny hometown. "You want that job, Conk? I ain't never heard you being in too much of a hurry to go back to Clearbrook." Minnesota, about the only place colder in winter than where they stand right now.

"I don't know," the boy repeats. "I ain't sure I want to stay here, is all."

"Conk." Deep breath, smells of the kid's cigarette glowing there at his fingertip, nothing more than something to hold onto – the kid hasn't taken a pull since lighting it. "You ain't talking about leaving because I might not stay, are you?"

A shrug for his answer, and the kid looks so familiar there, slim and tall, lost and dejected.

_("Why do you got to go, Luke? They already got a quarter of a million troops," in Vietnam, that was, a number they had heard over and over again on the radio, muttered by people in town, and most likely Bo had been taught it in school, too. "They don't need you."_

_Oh, but they thought they did, were so totally convinced of it that they'd come all the way to Hazzard County, Georgia, looking for strong bodies and patriotic Americans. "Because I was drafted." Had to force himself to be patient, not to tell Bo to shut up already when they had both known for two months that there was no way out of this. "Because them troops that's already there got to come home, Bo." And get replaced by naïve, fresh and energetic younger men, really. Like changing out batteries in a flashlight. And maybe, just maybe, Luke hoped that he'd be amongst the last batteries that the country would need for this particular flashlight, and by the time Bo came of age he'd be able to keep his energy right here in Hazzard, where it could light up the whole county._

_"Dang it, Luke," of course, there hadn't been a whole lot of brightness in Bo since he got that first notice to report for medical evaluation. "I don't want you to go."_

_"I know." Barely past the age of eighteen himself, Luke Duke didn't know a lot about where he was going, or what it would take to survive there. Didn't have two good thoughts to rub together over how the farm would manage without him, nor any real strong idea of whether he'd ever see it again, once Jesse drove him off to Atlanta in the morning. But he did know enough to pull the boy in front of him into his arms, to hold on as long as he could against the pain in his own heart in order to settle the fears in the one in front of him. "I don't want to leave you, neither.")_

"Maybe," Conklin admits. "I don't know that I want to be here if you're not."

"Put that nasty thing out and sit down," Luke instructs. Same tone he uses when training them, and he knows the kid will do exactly what he says. So he plops himself down on the icy concrete and waits to be joined there. "Getting rank at your age, that's really something," Luke reminds him. "And if you're going to be happy commanding a truck in town, then you might as well take the job."

Conklin nods a little, looking at his feet. Clown-sized sneakers on them, probably special order. This kid's got giant hands and feet, but those are pretty useful traits in a firefighter.

"But if you're worried about what happens if I leave and you get another team leader, you just rethink that notion." Again, he's reminded of a young Bo, the way the boy looks shyly up at him through his bangs. "You're a good jumper, Conk. Team player, never leave another man behind. You ain't got nothing to worry about." He runs his hand through the kid's hair, making a mess of the stuff. Straight and thin, it always picks up an electrical charge with the slightest provocation. "You just spend more time listening to your leader, whether it's me or someone else, than you do goofing off and making jokes, and you'll be a great jumper. The kind any leader wants to have under him. And maybe even get a team of your own someday. All right?"

The kid nods, and Luke shoves at his shoulder before standing up. "Thanks, Duke," he says, and though Luke's offering him a hand up at the time, he knows the words don't refer to that. This, here, might just be why he's kept this job as long as he has, and why he'd never want to take the Regional Supervisor position, even if Rico left tomorrow, even if it paid double.

"Come on," he says. "You got to help me rescue the boys from my cousin and them yarns he's spinning in there." Smile on the kid's face and Luke claps him on the shoulder, then follows him inside.

"Duke!" is what Smitty hits him at the door with. "Is it true?"

He smirks, looks at Bo. Silly little grin there, and he reckons his cousin's been having a little too much fun in here.

"Something he told you? Not a chance." Except Dukes don't lie, even if they do sometimes like to mislead. Bo pulls a face at him. _Tell the truth, Luke_, it says.

_About what?_ his raised eyebrow asks back.

"Old Luke there, he come crashing right through that fence. A whole back forty he could have landed safely in, but no, he had to go showing off, trying to put that thing down right next to our Uncle Jesse. Except he didn't have half the control over it that he thought he did." Devil's grin over there on the charmer's face; Bo is most definitely enjoying himself.

His hand's fussing at the dark curls on the back of his head when he says, "Well, it's partly true, anyways." About the ultralight crash he got into nearly twenty years ago now.

"Luke!" Bo sounds like the same twenty-five-year-old he was at the time that it happened, snapping in that affronted way he always has when he gets disagreed with.

Luke waves his hand through the air to settle the man. "The part about me crashing through the fence is true," he admits, to Bo's glee. "But it wasn't because I was showing off. It was because I was fighting the air currents, not steering into them. Y'all must have heard me say it a hundred times, how the air is your friend up there, but you got to make peace with it, let it tell you what it wants you to do." His other hand rubs across his backside. "I think I still got some scars from when I did that."

Bo giggles, Marks smirks.

"An ultralight isn't exactly a parachute, Duke," his most senior jumper taunts, with just an edge of _you don't know what you're talking about_. That attitude could get the kid hurt one day.

"You're right, it ain't," he agrees. "Main difference is, with an ultralight, there's a piece of equipment there between you and the ground, ready to take the hardest knocks. You make the kind of landing I did with only a parachute over your head and nothing underneath, and your buddies there," the rest of Luke's pups, all but sitting there and wagging their tails obediently, "will be picking up pieces of your hide from all over the countryside." Marks nods; he's not exactly going to agree, but he's going to shut up for now. "You boys, all of you," catching each of their eyes, even the ones that belong to Morton and not him. "Just mind what I taught you." _Because I might not always be here to save your necks from getting broken._


	31. One Way to Spend the Evening

One Way to Spend the Evening

Luke's in there turning the mattress, grunting with the effort of wrestling against its naturally flopping ways. It occurs to Bo to stop him, tell him he it doesn't matter which side of the mattress is where, but then again, he reckons if Luke wants to do this for him, he won't stop him.

"You all right, Lukas? Need help?" But he also figures Luke doesn't need to do it alone.

"Fine." Except he really doesn't want help, that much is clear. And Bo probably shouldn't be walking away from the stove anyway. Not if he wants his hash browns to come out brown instead of black.

Hash browns, to go with the leftover fried chicken that Luke's insisting on finishing off tonight. And which he got a skeptical look for suggesting would make a nice side, quick and easy to make.

"I know you ain't learned how to make _them_ from Daisy," Luke announced, looking up through eyelashes with those doubting eyes of his. No fair how that intense blue always held all of his attention, even when Luke was making fun of him.

"I didn't," Bo assured him. "This here I picked up from Celia."

"Celia?" Luke was incredulous. "Celia? You dated a girl named Celia? Ain't I never taught you nothing?" And, head shaking all the way about things only Luke would begin to understand, he'd headed back to the bedroom, leaving Bo to make Celia's specialty all by himself. Not a hard dish, honestly, his cousin could learn it quickly if he had the inclination, but long about the time that Bo got the potatoes in the pan and frying, there was that wrestling match between man and inanimate object going on in the bedroom.

And it's mighty convenient how that struggle ends and Luke emerges, sweaty and huffing, just about the time that things get to smelling awfully good. For all that there was that lecture this morning about him not needing to do chores, Luke seems plenty content to let him do the cooking.

Beer, it turns out, is the chosen beverage to accompany cold chicken and hot hash browns; Bo learns this when an open one gets handed to him as he's figuring out whether hash browns require a serving dish or can just be put straight onto plates alongside the chicken that he's already divided up. Clever man, his cousin is, using the beer to distract him while he swipes a little taste of the potatoes, straight out of the pan. Daisy ought to see this, ought to dole out lashings with a spatula like Bo can't quite bring himself to do.

"I take it back," Luke says. "Celia's all right."

Dinner is quick and utterly lacking in anything like manners. Two Duke boys, pounding down breasts and thighs like the twenty-year-olds they once were, filling their bellies before a night out tomcatting. Second beer gets broken out to accompany doing the dishes, a task completed at the same breakneck pace as eating the meal went. And before he knows what's happened, it's seven-thirty, purple dusk leaking into the house, and two Duke boys at loose ends.

"What do you do," he asks, swigging down the last of his beer. "To keep yourself occupied out here?" For all the places they went today, and he reckons that Luke introduced him to pretty much the entire Anaconda metropolitan area (not that there's a metropolis in sight), his cousin never pointed out anything like the Boar's Nest or Grapevine back home, two places where younger versions of themselves spent many a long night. Heck, there wasn't even a Cooter's Garage in which to while away a day. "You need a television or something."

Funny how Luke manages to look just like Uncle Jesse about that one. Hard stare, shaking head, snort at little boys who don't know any better than to get attracted to newfangled things that bring moving pictures right into the home.

"I do got one," is the answer his glowering cousin comes out with. "In the storage closet. You ain't seen it there?"

"What's it doing there?" Bo takes his life into his hands to ask.

"About the same thing it'd be doing if it was out there in the living room," Luke informs him. "Nothing much at all. Unless you like static. Besides, I ain't never needed one of them things before, and I ain't going to start needing one now."

Well, it's not exactly need that drove Bo to getting one. Something more along the lines of boredom. And wanting to watch races. And Luke's got to know as well as he does that a cable connection does away with white noise. "Why do you got one at all then?" he asks the man who is so smug about his lack of a working TV set.

Luke shrugs. "Came with the place. Just about everything here did. Except my desk; I picked that up myself at one of them consignment stores in town. Didn't have no need for it at the time, but it was just sitting there in the window looking so pretty that I bought it one day."

Bo's not sure whether to be sad that Luke's one true love over all these years has been a desk, or touched that he could swoon so much over a bit of craftsmanship.

"Come on," he says, tilting his head toward the living room. "Help me build a fire; the way that wind is setting up out there, it's going to be another cold night."

Helping Luke turns out to be standing back while he stacks the logs then lights the kindling, but that's just fine. It's a chance to really watch Luke work like he hasn't in years, muscles in his legs pulling taut under the jeans as he squats there, shoulders rippling with each movement in the process. His only complaint, really, is that by the time the fire's putting a nice shiny, orange glow onto Luke's skin, his cousin backs away from it to find himself a seat on the couch. Bo heads back to the kitchen for another beer, bringing one for Luke, too. They may not be kids anymore, but the Duke boys still seem to be able to put away a good bit of alcohol between them. He hands off the one bottle, then settles on the opposite side of the couch from Luke, sipping at his own.

"So what _do_ you do with yourself?" Because if drinking beer in front of the fire is how his older cousin entertains himself, Bo's going to have to start seriously worrying over his health.

"I go out for drives a lot. More stars here than there are back east."

"You run dark, don't you." Old moonshine runner's skill, to drive by starlight only. And though they gave up the trade half a lifetime ago, the image of Luke speeding over these nearly empty roads without headlights makes perfect sense. Some small bit of home that he could bring with him.

"Sometimes," he admits. "And on nights like this, when I've got a fire going and can't leave, I read."

"Read what, those technical manuals in there?" That's worse than whiling away the nights getting slowly drunk.

"Sometimes. I got some other books, too, under the bed." Well, that's an interesting storage system. Bo reckons he's got any number of items under his bed back in Atlanta, but most of them are things he's long ago assumed lost forever, others are constructed entirely of dust, and one of two of those might even be alive. But this is Luke, with the all but alphabetized pantry in there. "Or I look at maps."

A sane man couldn't blame Bo for laughing at that; Luke's clearly not entirely sane. "You look at maps?" Who is this man, and what has he done with the wild boy, climbing out car windows to ride on the roof and lob blockbusters at revenuers, that Luke Duke used to be? "For fun?"

Snorting, eyes rolling and, "I expect you'd like it if you tried it Bo. It's like looking at picture books, and I know you ain't never got tired of them."

Oh, nice, real nice. "What do you look for, on these maps? They don't never change, do they?"

"Sometimes," Luke says, and he's halfway glowering through slitted eyelids, "I use them to figure out where you're racing. I look at the distance from Atlanta to wherever you are and wonder if you got enough rest after the drive to be racing. Sometimes."

"Luke," he wants to kiss him, maybe. Touch him anyway, for the ways his cousin's never stopped looking out for him, but the way he's slouching over there doesn't invite it. "I ain't a kid no more. I drive safe and on plenty of sleep."

Luke nods about that. "Ain't all maps roadmaps, Bo," is some kind of a shift in subject. Luke's up on his feet then, heading over to the office. Flicks a light on, then back off before he's back with a scroll in his hand. Spreads it out on the rug in front of the fire, then lays down on his belly, arms folded in front of him, so he can look at it.

Luke Duke as a little boy all over again. Bo can't help but crawl down to lay next to him. It's one of those circle covered maps like the one he found a couple of days ago when he first poked around the place.

"What's it for?" Looks almost like some kid with a new compass and a blue crayon drew all over an otherwise fine map.

"Aeronautical chart," Luke informs him. "Tells a pilot what to look out for, gives landmarks and altitudes. Of course, when we fly out over a fire, them landmarks get lost under the smoke. Still, a map like this gives you some idea of what dangers are out there."

God, that's such a scary concept, something he's never bothered to think through before. Luke's in danger from the minute he sets foot on a plane, through the drop, and all the way up until he and his team come staggering out of the woods a few days later. He doesn't care anymore whether Luke wants to be touched, his hand finds its way into the man's hair. Soft, long, warm, _alive_. And he doesn't want to think about how many times Luke must have come close to being gone, forever, from his life. What a fool Bo was to ever leave Hazzard, if it was going to lead to his cousin doing _this_ for a living.

"Like that symbol right there," his cousin says, ignoring the touch that's finding its way down to the nape of his neck. Soft skin there, Bo reckons there's more of the same under his shirt. "Is a tower. Those pose the biggest danger. The rise and fall of the land is usually easy to find; it's what's burning down there." The backs of his fingers find cheek, thumb stroking there. "It's them manmade things that can get you—"

Bo kisses him then, even if he has to just about pull all the muscles on the left side of his body to do it.

He draws back to get treated to a smirk. "No wonder you done so bad in Geography," is the assessment. "You ain't listening to a word I'm saying."

Oh no, not true. He's listened to every single word, thought about them, felt their meaning someplace deeper than his brain, closer to his heart. And he reckons he'd rather feel the softness of lips under his, so he kisses Luke again, thumb stroking down against the grain of beard, then back up.

It's not his fault that Luke shoves at him until he's got enough leverage with his hands to roll them, not his fault when Luke winds up on top of him. Kissing then, different from the gentle little things Bo was giving him, different from anything they've done before. For all that he can feel the warmth and weight of Luke up against him, there's no rubbing or rocking, he's just there and close. There's a loose, comfortable feel to their limbs, one of his hands back up in Luke's hair, just finding one curl, then another, to explore. Meanwhile there's a hand on his chest, casually fiddling with the buttons on his shirt, not making any honest attempts at getting them undone. There is, for moments at a time, just this.

One too many moments, maybe, because Bo gets to remembering how Luke is suspected of kissing with his eyes open, and there's the automatic disconcerting response, that feeling of being watched. He pulls back as best he can, considering how there's really no place to go, and raises his own lids. Kiss stopped, just gazing into the blue right above him.

Pause there, long enough to recognize that the floor underneath him is hard and not particularly warm, then consider whether such things matter a whole lot, before Luke's moving again, lips on his neck, tongue, and his eyes slide closed once more. Fingers explore their way out of all that dark hair to find skin, there just under the collar of Luke's shirt.

His breath's starting to hitch up; running from the law always felt just like this, heart changing speed as an echo. His ear, sensitive part just underneath the lobe, and Luke's lingering right where it makes his panting turn closer to a moan. He can feel the smile there, pressed against his neck, and his eyes crack open again to see Luke watching how he gasps for air. Hand sliding into his shirt now (wonders when the buttons stopped being toys and turned into obstacles to be removed so stealthily that Bo never noticed it happening), warm palm dragging across his chest, then four fingers followed by a thumb. It's that last part that's so dangerous, stroking over skin that he reckons must be easily twice as sensitive now as it's even been under smaller, more slender fingertips.

Two can play at this game. Sort of, the body on his is not in the best position for retaliation, and the lazy feel of what they're doing right now doesn't bear interruption for a wrestling match. So he just slides his own hand down over Luke's shirt, down the curve of his back until he finds jeans. Hitches here and there as Luke's hand explores ever downward onto more ticklish muscles, but Bo's determined. Pulling at the hem of Luke's shirt, untucking what his cousin always keeps so neatly pushed down into his pants, but it's for a good cause: skin. Smooth, warm, and there's that dip right there, little gap between jeans and spine, just tempting the invasion of his fingers.

This would be easier, he reckons, if he used both hands, but his right arm is resting comfortably against the floor, under Luke's left. Fingertips there on the inside of his wrist, like keeping track of his pulse, and that little bit of peaceful affection is nothing he wants to interrupt.

"Bo," comes the whisper in his ear, almost as ticklish as the tongue that was rolling its way around the cartilage there was a few seconds ago. "What are you doing?"

It would be a valid question really, if it were anyone but Luke asking. True enough, down the back of his cousin's pants is a strange place to find his fingers, but then again, the counterpoint is Luke's fingers doing lazy loops around the dip where his stomach muscles suck away from the touch.

"Looking," he says, trying to nudge those lips away from his ear, but not far. Tricky business, maneuvering Luke's face into the right position to be kissed, made all the more challenging by the way his breath still comes in short little gasps. "For that scar." Those words bring that dark head up, sarcastic squint there, and Bo kisses those lips before they can get flattened out into an unamused flat line. Short little thing, because there's more to that sentence: "From the ultralight crash."

And that right there is a frown, but it's all right. Bo reckons it'll be fun to kiss that thing right off of Luke's face.

And while it's clear that the pursuit of a nonexistent scar (because nothing ever really managed to touch either of them back then, and if that left them with no real blemishes, it also meant that nothing of consequence ever really happened to either of them, not until they touched each other) is a fool's hunt, those fingers come away from his belly and out of his shirt. Wiggling shift there, and the clink of Luke's belt coming open. Must've unbuttoned his own fly, too, because there's plenty of room now where Bo's whole hand has slipped under the waistline of those jeans.

Back to kissing again, and so much for lazy and relaxed; movement everywhere from the way Luke's hair sweeps across his forehead, to the hand that's back on his belly, then there's the cant of their hips. Cold floor, hot fire: this here is every bit as blinding as lye-laden whiskey, and he reckons it doesn't matter whether Luke keeps his eyes open or not – there's no way he can see anything around the intensity of this moment.

"Luke," he pants out when there's that brief respite to breathe. Waits long enough for his cousin to lift his head from where he's been puffing on Bo's neck, stays silent until the full concentration of those eyes is focused on him. "Do you want to?"

Inadequate words. He knows what they say and what they lack, but he also knows Luke. Knows that they've never needed full sentences to communicate vastly more delicate things than this, knows that the readiness of their bodies outweighs any other meaning that those words could have.

Blue fire there, Luke wants to. One hand over Bo's heart and the other one still testing at that pulse in his wrist. Watching, waiting, no doubt feeling the way Bo's stomach twists at the thought.

"You ain't ready," Luke pronounces quietly. Hand off his chest and into his hair, pushing it back from his face. Gentle how he does it, gentle how he kisses Bo's cheek. "It's all right," is how he acknowledges the way Bo doesn't argue, doesn't challenge the notion of what he is or is not ready to do. One more kiss, then those fingers are on the move again, down his chest, over his stomach, and to the button of his pants. "It's all right," he says again, warm hand reaching inside, wrapping itself around Bo.

It's all right. Tonight, hands and lips will be enough.


	32. In the Light of Day

In the Light of Day

"You." It's too early in the morning for Bo to be that put out. That tone of voice only follows on the likes of county commissioners accusing him of bank robbery, or fools that comment on the nature of what they'd like to do with Daisy behind the bar of the Boar's Nest. "Need to stop running off so early."

Running off. The thought makes him snort. Sitting on the porch swing is not running off, not to man who is used to running a three mile course each morning. Or used to be; he has to admit to himself that it's been a few months since his last run. Maybe more than that, considering winter interfered with his habits even before he went off to Hazzard.

"I didn't go nowheres," he informs the man that's flopping down on the seat next to him, as if this swing isn't held up by chains and eye hooks, as if gravity hasn't already been working on pulling it back down to the ground. "I'm right here." Watching his breath as it dissipates out into the cold.

If he'd been a more thoughtful man, he might have made a fire for his cousin, who is fully dressed, but still wrapped up in a blanket to be out here with him. Or cooked him up some breakfast, but somehow the need to be outside of his own four walls overtook him this morning.

"I'm supposed to tell you to stop being a fool," he informs the man who is all but huddling up to him for shared warmth, but Luke's got none to spare. "I'm supposed to make you call Gabriela and do whatever you got to do to fix her broken heart."

There's big huffing sigh to his right. "You called Daisy. Luke—" _I'm sorry_ is in the tone, if it never makes it to being words. And that's fine, Luke doesn't want to hear the words, or even feel them when they're not said. The last thing he wants is for Bo to be sorry. About anything. "I told you she could wait."

Yeah, Daisy could have waited, but there was no reason to make her, at least not when Luke woke up before the sun. Old habits and muscle memory, his body never much made it past six before performing its own kind of reveille, a twitch of toes, a cramp in his back, the one time that rolling over meant being awake instead of drifting back into the blissful blankness of sleep.

And if he chose to leave Bo to his own version of peace – which paradoxically includes the same near violent snore the boy has always set to doing, even when he was small enough that it was a wonder he could get that much resonance in that little body – instead of kicking the man awake, it would seem there would be an appreciation of that. But approval is too much to ask of this day that dawned clear, but gets to feeling darker with each passing minute.

_"Hello?" _

_Six-thirty, he had calculated automatically, was eight-thirty in Durham. No reason Daisy had to go sounding all confused at receiving a phone call come that time of morning; like Luke she still rose early, was most likely well past breakfast and onto cleaning house or some such already. _

_"Hey Sweetheart," was his quiet greeting, gentle to still whatever was the cause of that trepidation within her. _

_"Oh, Luke honey." Worked like a charm, there were her gracious southern manners, fully restored. "How are you?"_

_"I'm good, real good." And though that was his standard answer, words he'd said to her at least weekly for the past fifteen years or so, he found that, for the first time in recent memory, he meant them. He was good. "How about you?"_

_"Oh, I'm just fine," was also routine. "Luke honey, you've got to talk sense into Bo," wasn't all that unusual either. Should have predicted it by the number of times in a minute-long conversation that he'd already been called Luke-honey._

_"Why, what's he done now?" Sassed her, ignored her, told her that if they weren't cousins he'd marry her?_

_"Now don't you go playing innocent with me, Luke Duke. You know he done broke that sweet Gabby's heart." He knew nothing about hearts whatsoever, actually. Bo might have broken the girl's thought pattern, interrupted a daydream she was enjoying. Heart – well there could be no way her heart even got involved in the mess; she didn't hardly know Bo, not really. Not when she swooned over throwaway flirtatious lines the man had been using since he was seventeen. Broke her heart – hell, the only thing Luke knew for sure was that she wouldn't be calling the Duke farm anymore. "Called her up and did it over the phone, Luke! Didn't even have the decency to tell her to her face."_

_"Daisy." She was in a fine tizzy about this one. Uncle Jesse would be proud of the fit she was pitching, right down to the high wheedling pitch of her voice that seemed to have been borrowed from the old man, posthumously. "Los Angeles is a long way to go just to—" break someone's heart._

_"He managed to make it out to Montana, didn't he?" That was just – the kind of thing he couldn't react to. Daisy and Bo could work each other up into a state beyond sanity and well nigh onto screaming at each other by using those kinds of words. Luke, well Luke never let either of them get under his skin. (Except Bo had, long ago and without even trying, crawled right up under Luke's skin with him, taken up residence, and cackled with glee at itching and tickling at him from there.) "He's been following after you his whole life."_

_"He ain't following after me. He just came out to visit, is all." Not that unusual, really, except for all the times Luke made it back east, down to Atlanta and even up to Durham, neither Bo nor Daisy had ever come out to see him. Then again, he didn't figure Montana was either of his warm-blooded cousins' choice of destination. _

_"Luke." Clearly he was being an idiot, because here came the lecture. "He's only done looked up to you his whole life. He does what you do. You was supposed to settle down first, get married and have kids. Maybe take over the farm." Daisy's romantic fantasies, revealed. He might have wanted to laugh them off, tell her she was still a silly daydreaming girl. Except he couldn't, because it wasn't some kind of fairy story she was telling, it was a reasonable scenario. Something he had wanted for himself, or maybe just expected. The man he should have been. "Bo – he ain't never stopped thinking you hung the moon, Luke. If you ain't gonna settle down – and it looks like maybe you ain't – at least do right by Bo. Tell him to stop being a fool and go out to Los Angeles after Gabby. Tell him it ain't too late to make it up to her."_

_When had his head sunk into the hand that wasn't holding onto the phone? How had he come to be staring down at his own desk, the only visible thing other than the wood grain of its veneer being that old photo of him and Bo as nothing more than proud kids and builders of the world's coolest car?_

_"He knows what he's doing, Daisy. Bo's a big boy now." Fingers rubbing across his eyebrows, headache threatening there and it wasn't even seven in the morning yet._

_"Luke Duke, don't you go giving me that. You ain't never said that about Bo in your whole life, and it's just a little too convenient for you to go acting like you believe it now. He's looking to you to tell him what to do, just like he has all his whole life. Just you do right by him." Yep, that was a headache, all right. The kind that was likely to last all day._

_"I'll talk to him," he promised. "But I ain't going to try real hard to change his mind." Dukes didn't lie, after all._

"Are you sure, Bo?" he asks, funny sort of rasp to his own voice, pitch a bit too high in his own ears. Are you sure about us, sure about what you're giving up, sure you want what you've chosen instead? Sure you aren't going to go pining for Gabby, missing the kids you'll never have, yearning for the chance to walk through Hazzard Square casually holding hands with your pretty little bride? Are you sure you want this – sure enough to have to face down Daisy and tell her you've made your choice, and then announce to her what it is?

He closes his eyes against the flood of thoughts, the hundreds of questions Bo has never thought through, the words he doesn't have the heart to spout at his cousin right now. It's enough to ask, _are you sure?_

Hot arm around his shoulders, bringing the blanket with it. Wrapping them up into their own little nest of warmth, forehead against his temple, and the other arm draping across his chest.

"Luke," quiet in his ear. "I ain't never regretted a single thing we done together. Why would I start now?" Kiss to his cheek, arms tightening around him, quiet breath against his face.

It's supposed to make him feel better. It doesn't work.


	33. Bows, Arrows and Torches

Bows, Arrows and Torches

Daisy did a number on Luke. Of course, the man's not admitting to any such thing. He picked himself right back up off that porch swing, went after making breakfast with unusual flare, insisting on eggs _and_ sausage, then made the brilliant observation that some Celia-quality hash browns would make for a true southern meal. Offered to build a fire, suggested a trip into Anaconda and the sporting goods store to find him some warmer clothes with enough material to cover the length of his legs, proposed the possibility of a road trip over into the Bitterroot Mountain Range. Reasonable presentation of each idea, logical, calm. And every bit of it left Bo waiting to hear how if things went wrong now, it would be all Luke's fault.

Used to be a common refrain, something uttered from where Luke slouched on the passenger side of the General. Trees flashing by at well over the speed limit, and for once his older cousin couldn't have cared less whether all four wheels were on the ground or in the air, he was too busy worrying over how his scheming had gotten out of control, putting others at risk. _If she's hurt, Bo, I ain't got no one to blame but myself._ But those moments always came when they were in pursuit of something or someone – ironically, the culprit usually had it in for Daisy – that could be beaten into submission then detained for arrest, never to trouble the Dukes again.

What Luke's blaming himself for this time, well, there's no opportunity for violence as a release from it and no one to beat the tar out of over it – except himself, and the man's always been a little too skilled at that. Next best thing Bo can think of to chasing down criminals (or just plain fools – Milo Beaudry wasn't smart enough to break laws – he just saw what he wanted and took it) is a hike, which is his counter-offer to all of Luke's suggestions.

"Best we give you another day to adjust to the altitude," Luke counsels, so it turns into a walk. Long one, all the way down the length of Willow Creek, miles of bubbling stream, until they hit what Luke deems railroad land that they shouldn't cross. There's a quiet tension to his cousin, broken by perfectly reasonable responses to whatever questions Bo can think of to ask: them mushrooms are poisonous, even cooked; yes, it has been known to snow this late in the year; well, it used to be that this area was known for its copper, but those days are gone. But in between his bursts of his well-rehearsed southern manners, Luke's shoulders are taut and his eyes are distant. He's thinking.

His oldest cousin likes to play at pretending that Daisy's just a silly female, prone to overreacting. Nothing to take seriously here, folks, this is just a fine example of my cousin's irrationality on display. But the truth of it is, Daisy's always had a strange power over Luke. The ability to make him feel, even when he's kicking his feet against the assault of it, the strength to make him tolerate being cared for when all he wants is to lash out. Maybe it's because the girl harbors a deep need to mother someone, and Luke's old enough to remember, in snatches like a slide show, actually having a woman that he called mom, who loved him that way. Whatever the cause, their female cousin can tie Luke up in knots, no matter how much he wants to protest to the contrary.

Empty country here. Warming up in the midday sun, making him peel that flannel shirt of Luke's that all but belongs to _him_ now, off of his shoulders and tie it around his waist. No people in sight, but no trees to speak of either, nothing to hide behind, and even if there was, it wouldn't matter. Luke's as empty as the landscape, not really here, no one Bo could pull into his arms and genuinely comfort in any way. And now that his over-thinking cousin's gone and gotten his brain started, there's nothing to do but wait for him to work through each angle of the thing until he comes up with a solution, or declares that there isn't one. Bo already knows it's the latter, could save them both hours of time and distance, but Luke wouldn't listen to that bit of logic right now anyway.

"I'll call her," he offers instead, somewhere in the middle of a discussion of which particular variety of weed it is that they're walking through. "And tell her to leave you out of it." He's tired of pretending to give a damn about sagebrush, tired of waking up to days like this, after nights that have earned the right for the good feeling they generate to last longer than they ever seem to. Maybe he needs to forbid Luke from using his own telephone.

"Wouldn't work," Luke informs him, sounds like just about every other time Bo has posited a plan. Ninety-nine out of a hundred get dismissed instantly, and that last one, while it gets accepted, is usually accompanied by a great deal of sarcasm and the suggestion that Luke's brain's been rubbing off on him. "If it's your business, it's her business, which automatically makes it my business." Welcome to the Duke family, where twisted logic like that is indisputable. And Bo is probably going to have to rip the phone lines right out of the wall.

Luke stops walking, abrupt halt to what had been a nearly military rhythm. Comfortable enough pace, but hardly wavering, regardless of terrain, and now it's all stilled as Luke stares into the ankle-deep flow of snowmelt run-off that they've been tracing the length of. Takes Bo a couple of steps to break himself of the pattern, makes him do a tiny loop to come back and stand shoulder to shoulder with Luke. Waits quietly for the vibe of his cousin's mind to be known to him.

His stomach pitches down and the moisture beats a hasty retreat out of his mouth when he figures it out. "We got to tell her, ain't we?"

Luke's nod is slow, takes a few seconds for his words to follow. "Not right now, though. Not until we see her." Pause there, then, "I'm also supposed to tell you that it ain't right to go breaking up with a girl long distance like that."

Or, given that disconnected wires are all too easy to repair, maybe he should smash Luke's tinny-sounding phone to little bits.

He doesn't give a damn about the lack of tree cover, couldn't care less when Luke tries to buck out of the grip Bo's suddenly got on his neck, just redoubles his efforts until their foreheads come together, because if his cousin really didn't want to be touched right now, he'd have managed to get free.

"I ain't got no regrets as far as Gabby is concerned," he makes clear, staring straight into those blue eyes, beckoning them back from wherever it is Luke's deep thoughts have taken them off to.

Gets a sigh for his efforts, which is about the best that his contrary cousin ever does in acknowledging that Bo's words have been heard, halfway accepted as fact. Hand comes away from that slippery, sweaty neck, letting go because Luke needs him to. He's been on his best behavior tolerating this much touch when he's still working through the dark recesses of his own brain.

They've managed to waste a good part of the day walking by the time the steep rise that leads up to Luke's cabin looms in front of them. Makes Bo miss the rolling tilt of eastern hills all the more, having to climb this at the end of their walk.

"We'll tell Daisy, then," he manages to get out between the puffs of air as they make the ascent. Luke's breath is coming a touch heavier than normal too; he's just too stubborn to really pant like the hill calls for. "When we get back to Hazzard. Just don't go calling her without me no more." He notes the silence there, the lack of response to any part of what he's said. Reckons it would stop up Luke's plumbing something fierce if he flushed the telephone down the toilet, not to mention risk of electrocution. Still, the idea holds a certain amount of appeal.

Luke's porch is all the further he can make it. Steps there make for a fine seat on which to catch his breath. Sweaty man stands there in front of him, shaking his head at baby cousins that just can't keep up, but Bo reckons that if it's paining him to much to linger there, the door's only a few steps away. Eventually Luke gives up his vigil and sits himself a step or so above Bo.

"Warmed up," he notes, when his breath settles enough for it.

Luke's all but swimming in his own sweat; that snort of his doesn't refute the statement, more like acknowledges the obviousness of it. "It'll do that. Cool right back off without much warning, neither. It's calm, though, not much wind. Could be we get a couple of warm days here."

Which will go a long way toward making things tolerable – after he incinerates Luke's phone and he won't have to worry about grouchy cousins or cold floors greeting him in the morning, he might just manage to be happy here.

"Luke," _I'm sorry_ is there at the back of his tongue, but it won't do any good to say it, any more than anything else has done any good. "You still got your bow?" he asks instead.

"Damn," Luke comments, a touch too amused for Bo's tastes. "You really ain't all that observant. Come on," he says, standing up. Bo's not sure it's worth the effort to join someone who's just this side of laughing at him, not when it takes the tired muscles of legs to lift him onto the sore soles of feet. Then again, there's that hand reaching down for his, so he takes it, holds onto it even after he's used it to get to his feet. Gets surprised when Luke weaves their fingers together before leading him into the house. Odd, the door gets locked at night, but they've been gone for the better part of the day, leaving it all but wide open.

"It's all right, Bo," he says, but it's not really. The muscles of Luke's arms stand out rigid under where his sweat-wet shirt clings to him. "There ain't nothing else to find in here." The storage closet. "Nothing else you don't want to see. It's okay to look around if you want."

And after that little bit of reassurance, his hand gets let go. Luke flips the switch to light up that bare bulb on the ceiling, then reaches up to the top shelf. Nice stretch to his body there, made better by the way his shirt sticks close to his skin. Looks the same as he did the day he came back from the Marines; strong, lean, muscular. Bo's eyes rest low on the man's body, watching how he moves in those jeans. Moves and turns, making Bo look up right quick, but it's too late, he's been caught gawking. Warmth on his face, but there's not a lot of time to concentrate on his embarrassment, what with the way Luke's handing him a familiar brown case. Matching one stays in Luke's other hand as Bo feels around the edge to catch the zipper. Angles the opening to the light so he can see inside.

His bow, identifiable by the scarred end where it slapped to the ground in deference to flinging his hands over his head and diving low into the bed of Jesse's truck. That, of course, was before Luke near about took out the trees on either side of the lane with his evasive maneuvers, just waiting for that particular pair of Boss Hogg's stooges to empty their gun. Soon as the shots stopped, the truck had lurched around, skidding to a violent stop. Luke on the attack, storming up to the car that had just been chasing them, and pulling the driver out by the neck of his jacket, two solid punches mashed unto the stranger's jaw before Bo even found his feet. Vicious punishment doled out for daring to shoot at one Bo Duke, and in the end, he'd had to pull Luke off of one very well-thrashed man. Soon as Rosco showed up to fumble his way through something of an arrest, they'd gone back to look for his bow, Bo fearing all the way that it would be damaged beyond repair, and they sure as hell couldn't afford a new one for him. He remembers now, how Luke snorted over his worries, telling him that a bow was nothing more than wood and string, they'd figure a way to replace it. Told him he'd done the right thing, letting it go of it to protect himself, because there was nothing in the world that could replace Bo Duke. His stomach didn't know enough back then to cave in on itself at the way Luke looked out for him, but right now it responds that way to the memory.

"They's always been stored together," Luke tells him with a shrug. "Yours was just hanging there on the wall next to mine when I was packing up to move out here. You wasn't using it in Atlanta. I would have brought it back, if you ever asked." But when he left Hazzard – and Luke – behind, he did his best never to look back nor miss what he'd walked away from. "I just figured they belonged together, is all."

Silly bow gets dropped again, clattering to the floor case and all, where Bo couldn't give a damn if it gets broken now. Both arms around Luke, holding onto the man who did a far better job of carrying a torch than Bo ever managed.

And when Luke's tolerance for being hugged gets exceeded, he lets go. "Let's go hunting, Luke," comes out like the giddy little kid he was when he got the bow in the first place. "Just you and me. We can camp and stay out for a few days, just like old times." And the damned phone can just stay right where it is – it's not invited.


	34. Crying Over Spilt Onions

Crying Over Spilt Onions

"Bo." He's been reduced to cutting onions. This, after having handed over the keys to his Jeep and turned his cousin loose on the streets of Opportunity, with a stern warning about how southwestern Montanans had no defensive skills against wild driving Duke boys. Pooh-poohed for his worries, and then left to himself for a couple of hours to troll around his National Weather Service websites for signs of impending fires. ("Just," Bo said to him as he climbed up into the driver's seat. "Don't go calling nobody. Or even answering your phone if it rings.") Two paper bags under Bo's arms when he returned, full of noodles and vegetables, ground beef and sauce. "You ain't got to go to all this trouble." Lasagna.

"You won't be saying that when it's sitting there on your plate for the eating," Bo all but nags at him, Jesse style. "And the quicker you slice them up, the sooner you can wash your hands and disappear until it's done. Just—"

"Stay off the phone," comes out in unison. Because his cousin would like to blame an inanimate hunk of wires wrapped up in a plastic shell for things it has no control over. Like nosy cousins and unwanted advances from immediate past girlfriends, but in truth it all comes down to being Bo's fault. He kissed Luke first, and it's been a bumpy ride ever since. Typical of Bo to steer them toward ditches just so they'll have to jump them.

Onions, he can't even stand them. Bo swears up and down that they are absolutely necessary to the recipe (Lizzie's, apparently) and won't hardly be detectable in the end: "You just got to have them in there to balance out the garlic." Which has a reasonably pleasant flavor as far as Luke's concerned, so he's chopping that alongside the onions, even if Bo didn't ask him to. It's because the boy Bo's never quite stopped being has such sensitive eyes, can't tolerate the sting of a little onion juice, so he needs his big, strong cousin to do the cutting for him. And, Luke reckons, if it'll keep Bo from crying, he can mange to deal with the stink on his fingers for a few hours.

"The only thing in season is turkey." _If _they go hunting, which Luke is still not entirely convinced is a good plan.

Bo's so entranced in watching the water spin as he stirs at those giant noodles he's cooking up that Luke wonders if he's even been heard. "That's good," sounds just as distracted as the man looks. "We wouldn't want nothing no bigger than that anyways. Ain't like we got weeks to go eating on it." Which is silly, actually. The way Bo scarfs down food, a deer wouldn't last them but a week (which is just the slightest bit of an exaggeration, more like a month, too far into the future to go thinking about right now). "Where's your colander?"

"What?" he blurts out, halfway annoyed, but it's not his fault. He's not immune to the sinister burn of freshly cut onions, he just tolerates it. Mostly, when it doesn't make him snappish.

"The strainer thing," Bo clarifies, but Luke knows perfectly well what a colander is. He just never reckoned on hearing that word come out of Bo Duke's mouth.

"Cabinet over there," he answers, gesturing with his elbow, because he's sure as heck not going to touch a damned thing in this house until he gives his hands a good scrubbing.

"All right, I'll find it," Bo tells him. "It ain't nothing to cry over, Luke."

He'd strangle the man, if it wouldn't mean transferring the onion juice off of his hands and onto Bo's neck. He figures if the soft skin there tasted like onions it might just ruin one of the few pleasures he has in life. "Shut up," he mumbles instead, into the rolling mirth that's Bo's laughter.

He watches steam fill the room when the noodles get dumped into the colander, thinking about how the battery in his smoke detector's due for a change, and in its weakened state, steam might just set the dang fool thing off.

"Open a window," he suggests. The room's warm enough to need it anyway. Bo glowers at him, _open it yourself_ in his eyes, but Luke waves his knife in the air in some kind of universal signal for if-I'm-going-to-slice-your-damn-onions-the-least-you-can-do-is-open-the-window. Bo picks up on the sentiment, if not the details. "See," he adds in response to the cool breeze that marches right on in to chase away the warmth. "I told you it'd get cold once the sun goes down. You don't want to camp here in April, cuz."

"I got long underwear." Which isn't the best sales job Bo could do on the subject of camping. "And them sleeping bags are plenty warm. I'm gonna need them onions in a minute," he adds.

"They're done." And he would have been faster about it, if Bo wasn't a constant distraction with his chatter and ability to make a mess with the most unusual of media, including steam. At least now he can head over to the sink to try to scrub the smell off of his hands, warm water and soap up to his elbows. "You'd have to get up a hell of a lot earlier than you been managing," Luke informs his homemaking cousin. Funny how natural he looks there, layering noodles and cheese, and mixing onions into sauce.

"That's fine." Bo's paying more attention to the concoction in front of him than Luke, typical distracted behavior. "I'm dang tired of you sneaking off in the morning anyway instead of getting me up."

Typical of Bo to blame Luke for the way he sleeps in. Just as typical for him not to hear the subtext of what Luke's saying. "I'm talking about four in the morning, Bo. Sun comes up early these days." And hunting starts before dawn for no better reason than it always has.

"Shoot Luke, I'm _still_ up at four in the morning half the time. It ain't no big deal."

No big deal for little blonde boys who never grew up. And if Bo gets too tired to walk all day, he probably reckons Luke can still piggyback him, too.

"All right," he concedes. "We'll go. Just don't you go getting cranky when I shove you out of the bed." Or anywhere else along the way.

But there's no sign of a cranky Bo. He stops mid stir, dropping the spoon where it falls, so he can walk right up to where Luke's still halfway in the sink, trying to banish the onion juice from his skin. One arm around his shoulders, and a kiss as thanks. Ought to be a little thing, just a peck of appreciation, but Bo's got other thoughts. And while Luke might see the merit of such ideas, he also recognizes the value of a good meal, one that's currently in a half-made state. The kind of thing that'll never get finished if he leaves Bo to his own devices. Wet hand out of the sink and up into Bo's hair, ought to do the trick. Takes longer than Luke would expect for his cousin to give up on what he's not going to get, not right now when he's just been given that other thing he wants. Finally, though, Bo acquiesces and backs out of the kiss, wiping transferred suds off his cheek where Luke's wrist pressed against it.

"Now get lost for an hour or two," Bo tells him. "I'll let you know when dinner's ready."


	35. Missing Their Marks

Missing Their Marks

He had thought that it would be a good thing to get away for a few days, just him and Luke. He had reasoned out how all the little distractions of life in Luke's cabin added up to a whole lot of nothing but headaches. He had expected that getting intimate with the land would be an adventure for him, and maybe just plain good for Luke. He had been hopeful that, despite doom-and-gloom's insistence on the contrary, the days would be warm, and the night chill would be just enough to force a certain amount of huddling close for shared heat.

He had assumed that at least one of them would be able to hit the broad side of a barn with an arrow.

Snort from behind him. "Worst one yet," is Luke's comment on his errant shot.

"No it ain't," he defends. "That one you let go over on the hill was worse." Integrity is important in hunting and fishing. Without it, tall tales just keep on growing until they topple over under their own weight and kill someone. Shoot, Jesse always claimed it was just that very type of thing, and not the flu epidemic, that wiped out so much of the Hogg clan back in 1917. Bo figured it was probably something closer to gluttony that did it, but it wasn't wise to argue with his uncle on the topic, any more than it would be smart to go throwing integrity out the window when both parties involved in the dispute are armed.

He tugs again on the uncomfortable orange vest Luke went out and bought for him last night. Leave a man to his own devices while cooking him up just the best lasagna he ever put into his mouth (and Luke had at least been graceful enough to admit that) and this is what he winds up with in return. A stiff and frighteningly ugly bit of clothing. Over a green sweater, no less, another gift from Luke. Came wrapped in grumbles about how it wasn't his cousin's fault, exactly, that the only warm clothes the sporting goods store had in extra-long came in unattractive colors.

"Shoot," Luke reminds him. "My aim was dead on. Hit that tree," hand gesture there, mimicking the true flight of an arrow. "Right in the middle."

Too bad, of course, that the turkey Luke had been shooting for was a good fifteen feet away from the solid wood where the arrowhead is still embedded, too deep to be worth digging out.

"You gonna cook that tree up for our dinner?" Because the last Bo saw of it, the thing was still standing, barely bleeding the tiniest bit of sap.

"You're the cook," Luke reminds him, and that's fine, just fine.

"Then you best go back there and get that tree and lug it to the campsite." Which, of course, they haven't picked out yet, because they haven't had any success in the hunt. All it takes is one kill and Bo can lobby for quitting for the day, but can't either of them manage to hit a damn edible thing. "It illegal to kill squirrels here?"

Because this is not Hazzard, which was the first thing Luke reminded him of when he wrinkled his nose at the neon orange hunting vest. Such things have always been the mark of those who hunt for sport, not like Dukes who always did it for survival. Rich little boys and their daddies could afford fancy hunting gear and powerful guns, but didn't have the first clue when it came to understanding the land or its wildlife. He and Luke were raised without riches or daddies, but with respect for both the weapons they used and the prey they sought, and if Luke hunted in denim and Bo in corduroy, it didn't make them lesser men than those with proper hunting clothes, it just made them Dukes.

Pause there, Luke standing still and staring at him like he's just about as brilliant as the clumps dirt caught in the tread on the soles of his boots. "Bo," he says, and this is the part where grinning always seems to up the ante a bit, sticking yet one more burr under Luke's saddle. "Turkeys are bigger than squirrels. Dumber and slower, too. What makes you think that if you can't hit a turkey, you can get a squirrel?"

"I figured you'd get one," he says, flinging an arm across Luke's shoulders, face aching with the continued effort to smile. "Since you're so dang good at hitting trees, and that's where squirrels live."

He gets shoved off, but it's good natured. Silly little pull there to Luke's face, pointing out how funny he reckons Bo isn't.

"Just hush or you'll scare all the game away," he gets reminded. And he decides that Luke has a point, he needs to stop goofing off and buckle down. Because this isn't Hazzard; the terrain is less forgiving, the breeze that coils through these trees isn't mild, and apparently Luke knows what he's talking about when he says that the air is thinner up here. Packs on their backs have gotten a whole hell of a lot heavier than they used to be back in Hazzard, too.

Or maybe it's just that fifteen years of driving in circles hasn't left him in the same condition that smoke jumping has left Luke. He thought he was doing well not to have gained more than about ten pounds since his lifestyle went from hard, daily, physical labor to basically sitting on his ass most days. Oh, the races themselves take a hell of a lot of stamina and strength, but there are only about thirty in a year.

Whereas Luke's got to be running something of a boot camp up here in these mountains, demanding sit ups and squat thrusts, taking those boys of his out for six mile runs. And for all that they'd obviously do any darn thing Luke asked of them, he can't imagine his cousin ruling his employees with an iron fist. There's no way he'd make a one of them do anything he wouldn't do, which means daily six mile runs for Luke, too.

"Them jumpers of yours, you run them ragged like this?" he blurts, though he had no real intentions to. Could be that the altitude makes him a bit more honest than he wants to be. Or maybe it's just that Luke's marching along ten good paces ahead of him, along the edge of a curving slope that's just as exhausting on the way down as it was on the way up.

"They keep up just fine." Of course they do. They're mountain goats, apparently. Firefighting mountain goats that look up to Luke with their big, trusting, brown eyes, seeking out moments of his attention with about as much awe as Bo had for Cale Yarborough that first time they met him.

There's a boulder up there, sunk into a little crevice of this steep landscape. Luke's apparently decided it's a good place to take a seat. Bo would be miffed about how his cousin's babying him by resting now, if only he didn't want to sit down next to him so badly.

"That Marks is a pretty cool kid," he says, as he lowers himself onto to cold, hard stone. He reckons he'd be a fool to complain about Luke's choice of sitting places, unless he had a hankering to get marched right back off into the trees.

"Yeah, you would like him," is his cousin's assessment. "He's a pain in the ass, Bo. He'd be a hell of a better jumper if he'd stop thinking he knew every damn thing."

Funny. Bo's pretty sure those are exactly his Uncle Jesse's words from about twenty-five years or so ago. Said with regard to one Luke Duke and moonshine running, as he recalls.

Bo just shrugs. "I liked him a lot. Of all the guys, he seemed like the most mature." Maybe good enough to be a team leader.

"He'd be glad to hear you say that." Luke's digging around in his pack, tongue hanging out in concentration until he pulls out a canteen. "You're supposed to pack the water on top, Bo." Because he's the one who prepared that pack, the one that's heavy with canned goods and other food preparation tools. And Luke chose to carry it, leaving Bo to manage the one with the clothes and blankets that weighs about half as much. Just a damn showoff over there, hardly even breathing heavily, but since he's thoughtful enough to pass the canteen after only a sip, Bo reckons he's not going to go shooting off his mouth about it.

"He just about worships you, you know." They all do. Racing stories kept their attention pretty well, as long as Luke was behind closed doors. The minute he moved, every last one of their eyes drifted away to watch what their leader was up to. And when he entered the same space as those boys, they all shifted slightly in his direction, like a competition for who could get closest. The gawky Conklin may have won out, but each one of them vied to be the one who got to spend a few moments alone with Luke.

"They're a good bunch of kids."

It hits him then, violent as steel smashing into a concrete wall at over a hundred miles per hour. What he watched two days ago in the Forest Service Division office, what he's seen in Luke, on and off since they got here.

"You ain't ready to resign, are you." It's not even a question anymore; not since the metallic crash of the thought into his brain.

Just a shrug, like it's the eating habits of livestock that they're talking about. Bonnie Mae won't eat carrots, but Maudine loves them, and by the way, I'm not coming home after all, so you're going to have to do all the feeding yourself. "Sometimes I am," Luke says, and doesn't bother to look at him. "Sometimes I ain't."

"What did you bring me out here for, then? Just to—is this like what Daisy said? How you don't break someone's heart over the phone? Did you bring me out here just to—"

"Settle down, Bo." And for the fact that the words tell Bo how he needs to behave himself, they get barked in an aggravated tone. Like Lavinia used to use if he pitched a fit in Rhuebottoms, hissed in a not-in-front-of-the-townsfolk kind of a way. "We wasn't even together, not really, when I agreed that you could come with me."

Agreed that Bo could come along, same as he always had. Good old Saint Luke Duke, taking care of his baby cousin, letting him tag along where he doesn't really belong.

"So, what, now that I'm here you reckon you can just put me back on a plane to Atlanta? Is that what you were figuring, Luke?" He's standing now, two steps back and pointing at his cousin, breath coming as fast as if he'd been running, not resting, these past few minutes. Luke picks up the canteen from where it falls, capping it and tsking over lost water, but Bo couldn't give a damn about that, wouldn't care if the whole damn canteen had disappeared into a crevice never to be found again. "It ain't gonna happen that way, cuz."

"Bo," he gets interrupted, not smart, never smart to go butting in with such a reasonable tone when Bo's in the middle of a point like this.

"If you," has to pause to wipe his shirt sleeve across his mouth, where there's too much moisture. Looks as he pulls his sleeve away, but of course there's no blood. So far all Luke's hit him with is words, and not a whole lot of those. "If you go back in there," to that cold office just teeming with young men that adore his cousin. "And sign that contract, then I ain't going nowheres. I'll just stay here with you."

Luke's got the canteen back into the pack now, which he lets slide to the ground as he stands to face Bo. Calm, so calm and rational. "Bo, you'd be miserable here. It's cold except when it's hot, there ain't nothing for you to do, and when I'm on a jump, I'm gone for days—"

"I don't care, Luke!" Close, dangerously close to tears, like he's just a kid trying to convince his cousin that being drafted doesn't mean he has to go into the service. "I ain't leaving you here by yourself."

"I ain't alone here, Bo." Simple point of fact, Luke's surrounded by boys half his age.

"Yeah, you got your jumpers, and you got whoever the hell your friends might be. There's some people you know in town, maybe. But ain't a one of them," so much for pointing, there they are chest to chest, ugly hunting vests meshing into one orange blur. "Knows you well enough to know that you're lonely."

Those damn blue eyes close. Bo reckons that, kissing aside, he's grown to hate it when Luke shuts them.

"All right," he announces, stepping back to retrieve his pack and slide it over one shoulder. Bow in his other hand, and there goes Luke, resuming the march back off into the trees.

"What? Luke, don't you go walking away from me when I—"

"I said all right, Bo." Ever patient, his cousin stops and turns back to face him. "I'll go in and tell Rico I ain't signing the contract, first day we're back in town. Of course, I have to tell the guys first, but don't worry. I'll get to telling Rico right quick. Now come on, we done scared all the turkeys for probably a good mile radius. If we're gonna hunt, we got to get moving. Don't forget your bow," he adds, pointing to where it has fallen in the leaves, before turning away again.

Huh. Seems like he's won this fight that blossomed right up out of forest and frustrations. Funny how it feels like he's lost.


	36. In the Cold of the Night

In the Cold of the Night

Canned bean dinner just isn't sitting well in his stomach. Maybe he's gotten adjusted to Bo's home cooking, dang near as good as Daisy's ever was, or, just possibly, he's gotten used to the joyful noise of the man himself.

Who is currently in something of a deep pout, simply waiting to whip itself into something more potent. Presently taking it out on his pack, digging for long underwear, when Luke's already told him that it's coiled up into a roll between the blanket and their jeans. He'd take the pack from Bo, find the damn things himself, except he reckons it's too late for that. If he wanted a peaceful tentmate, he should have let this afternoon's discussion come to blows. Never mind that they're too old to go pushing each other's faces into the dirt and demanding obeisance from each other, he should have stuck out his chin for the punching before agreeing to what they've both known he has to do all along – resign his position.

Eventually the long johns get found and yanked out of the pack with enough force that they could as easily wind up in the fire as in the dirt at Bo's feet. Not that it matters; the poor things get a filthy look from his cousin anyway, whether it's for hiding so well in the pack, or getting themselves dirty, Luke doesn't hang around to find out.

"I got the dishes," he announces, though it clearly never would have occurred to his cousin that they even still need to be done. It's cold, Bo's miserable, and Luke knew this wasn't a good idea.

The beans that his stomach's not too impressed with provide proof of what could be foreseen so long as a man went through life with open eyes, and no blonde bangs to obstruct his view. Oh, Luke might have figured that at least one of them would have been able to make an arrow hit somewhere within a half-mile radius of where they wanted it to, but he also recognized that turkeys don't exactly make the easiest archery targets.

And anyone with skin could feel the northwestern cold lurking there under the sunshine warmth of the day, just waiting for a chance to sneak out from the shadows and blanket the world. Not that it's all that cold yet; Luke only shivers once when the winds blows straight down the hill into the small clearing where he's squatting by the stream. Maybe twice – there's that second breeze that follows on the first.

Bringing along some canned goods might have been Luke's idea, but it was Bo who packed the food, Bo who chose the kidney beans instead of the barbequed kind that might have slid down easier. Which meant that it was also Bo who packed the corn oil, little bottle of hope there that Luke dug out of the bottom of the pack after starting the fire. Not a dang thing that they brought or could have hunted up would have been in the least improved by the use of oil. Bo had to have seen the bottle by now, where Luke stuck it off to the leeward side of the fire circle, but there's been no acknowledgement of that.

"I would have helped," comes from right behind him, footsteps, then warm body squatting between him and the wind. "If you'd have waited a minute." Calmer now, or trying to be, making peace over a fight that never happened. Not a lot of light here to see by, but Luke figures that under that horrid green sweater the long underwear is making Bo one hell of a lot more comfortable than he's been.

The sarcastic brat he's never quite stopped being nags in his head about how he warned Bo it was going to be cold. "It ain't that big a job, Bo," he says instead. He hands wet dishes over to his cousin, though, because it's better than laying them in the dirt beside him.

And when they're all as clean as icy stream water can get them, he and Bo carry the tin plates back to the fire circle, where Luke dries them on his shirttail before putting them back into the pack. Bo stands behind and watches as each bit of food gets stuffed away, including the corn oil. Man doesn't say a thing, so Luke doesn't either, just hoists the packed food up on the length of rope he tied over a tree branch an hour or so back. Soon as he's got it securely tied where nothing bigger or less agile than a hummingbird (and Luke's never seen one in these parts) can get at it, Bo kicks dirt into the fire and the Duke boys crawl into their tent.

"'Night, Luke," and the zipping of sleeping bags ought to be the last sounds of the night. Well, other than what nature herself provides by way of wind gusts on tent flaps, and the sound of raccoons tussling in the trees. A man could sleep perfectly soundly here in the brisk, fresh air of the woods, if only his cousin wasn't huffing and turning every few minutes. No doubt Bo's uncomfortable over there, but it's got nothing to do with the ground underneath him; Luke made sure that plenty of pine needles made it under Bo's side of the tent.

"You cold?" he asks when he's had enough. Could be hours later, but he reckons it can't have been more than one at most. He's pretty sure he never did more than drift off for a minute or two.

"No," Bo answers and, it's in a pitiful tone. Man's too old to go sounding like that, but then again, he's never been a master at disguising anything. Forty-two years old, and Bo feels exactly as awful as the sound of that word.

"Come on," Luke says, unzipping his sleeping bag, then Bo's. Not much cooperation coming from his oversized cousin, which means Luke pulling and tugging until Bo catches a drift of what he's up to, helping to spread Luke's sleeping bag underneath then, then zipping Bo's overtop. More push and shove until all two-hundred (plus another twenty-five, Luke would guess) pounds of unhappy cousin gets rolled onto his side, where Luke can curl up against his back, arm around his chest providing warmth and restraining him against flopping around anymore. "Go to sleep, Bo," he commands just like he's done all his life.

And it must work, because the next time he's conscious it's after a dream filled with ash falling like snow, coating the ground and getting into his eyes and mouth, choking down into his lungs as he tries to call out for his team – and Bo.

"I'm right here," in his ear is such a relief that he lets himself cling to Bo, doesn't fight against the tightness or stifling heat of the man all but surrounding him, even if the sensation comes dangerously close to letting himself be comforted.


	37. Right Here

Right Here

Gentleness from Luke is intention found dwelling in the crevices between solid rock pushes and cold steel shoves. Somewhere, almost lost in the roughness of the execution, is the desire to make Bo more comfortable, to create peace through near-violence.

It's almost worse when the pushing stops, the sleeping bags are zipped together, and Luke's wrapped around him. His big cousin taking care of the fragile, hurt kid inside of him, when really, Bo's the one that's caused the damage, the one who shoved at the glass bubble that surrounds Luke until it shattered. _I said all right, Bo… I'll go and tell Rico_. Luke folding when he's got four aces, just so his baby cousin doesn't have to lose.

"Go to sleep, Bo," and Luke's strength surrounding him. _You're a selfish jerk, but_ _I still love you_ in that gesture, even if the man has never quite copped to loving him in the first place. As disquieted as his mind is, his body recognizes this as the warm milk of his childhood, and within a few more ticks of the clock he settles. Sleep.

He's known all his life the curves of that body next to his. Where it gives, surrounded by those parts hard enough to cause damage if they get crashed into at high speed, going the wrong way. Over the years he's figured out where to hit Luke if he wants to take the man down, and where to settle against the skin, muscle and bone of that body to stay safe from harm. Luke, and he's never really thought about this before, must know his body equally well, though he's had fewer opportunities to test the extremes. In all their lives, his cousin's never hit Bo first, and not once with the totality of his strength. Nor has he ever had to figure out how to let Bo soothe or comfort him in any real way; he's always been too busy stepping away, putting distance between himself and what has hurt him.

They know each other well enough to shift in their sleep, within the confines of a pup tent, to find new ways of laying together without the assistance of consciousness. And somewhere in the night they go from Luke holding him, to him holding on against a struggle that grew out of nowhere he knows, and left his cousin twitching and kicking, rasping like a scream stuck in his chest that's looking for exit out his clutching fingers or sweating brow. Waves of it, and Bo just maintains his grip against the violence, holding his breath against the larger swells that crash over his head, bobbing along through the less turbulent eddies. Occasionally calling Luke's name, wanting to bring him back out of the current that's trying to carry him away.

"Bo!" the rasp becomes, sound of a drowning man, grabbing for flotsam.

"I'm right here," he says, but he can't be heard over the crash and roar of the battle between them, fighting each other with the shared goal of rescuing Luke. "Cousin," he says again, a little more firmly, a lot closer to Luke's ear. "Come on now, Luke." Takes a blow to his nose, painful little crack of it, side effect of being too close when a shoulder tries to swim out of his grip.

"Bo," comes again, about the time he figures out that the only safe place to be is on top of Luke, wrestling him down. Takes some effort to get there, but it's not wasted. Closer to consciousness now, or maybe just tired, some of the fight's coming out of him. Gives Bo a chance to get closer, lips near enough to Luke's ear that they wind up with a sweaty lock of hair between them.

"I'm right here," he says again, a puff of a whisper this time; he's winded, but he's close, and Luke hears him. Muscles, one by one, start to relax under him, and Bo lets go of the wrists he's managed to get pinned. Uses his legs to make some sense of the sleeping bags that have become twisted around their lower bodies, making room to stretch back out. He settles there, bearing some of his own weight on elbows there tight against Luke's shoulders, the rest of his body holding his cousin down against aftershocks that never come. "I'm right here," he says one more time, just to make sure Luke knows, and _I ain't going anywhere_ is implied by the way his closeness locks their two bodies together.

Arms around him then, taut like rubber bands stretched tight and cutting into his skin, kind of thing that leaves a mark even after it's gone. But that's fine, it pulls him down close enough that there's no point in trying to keep any weight on his elbows, freeing up his hands to find skin and hair to stroke.

"What do you dream about?" is a fool's question, murmured into the stifling air between them before he can think better of it. It'll never get answered; he'll be lucky if he doesn't get shoved off and take a hit to his chin over it, and he's already got a pretty good idea that his nose may have been bloodied somewhere back there.

"Smoke," the answer comes, distant, tired voice. "Fires, people lost in fires." He's smart enough to keep quiet, to figure that this is probably the kind of thing he'll never mention again. "It always smells," Luke adds, "awful." That last word grates out of him.

Fire, when he thinks about it, has been their friend most days. Ash log fire under a copper pot for the distillation of their family business, another in their old stone fireplace to keep the farmhouse habitable back when the wind used to whistle right through the gaps between boards, and campfires that they sat up around half the night. But they've always known the danger behind flames, even before they knew much of anything else. Fully aware that fire gives heat, but always takes something away in the process. It wasn't the impact of car into the grill of a truck that killed their parents, it was the fireball that followed.

_People lost in fires. _

_Bo!_

"I'm right here," he dares to say again, feels the nod of Luke's head against the side of his face. Waits where he is, until those arms around him loosen. He rolls off then, leaving Luke to his own side of their shared sleeping bag. He hears the zipper pull, feels the chilled air enter this space with them. Nothing he wants, but he reckons he can put up with it for a few hours, if need be. Wipes his sleeve across his nose; too dark to see whether the moisture there is blood or mucous, decides it doesn't matter. More important to let his knuckles find Luke's arm, stroke there. And when they don't get slapped off or rolled away from, he lets his palm wander until it finds the beat of Luke's heart, then rests it there.

_I'm right here._


	38. Ain't So Awful Here

Ain't So Awful Here

They decide, when they wake up well after dawn and following his discovery of that crust of blood under Bo's nose, just to hike on back to the Jeep he left at the parking area a few miles north of here. He's too old now to pretend he didn't spend a good chunk of the night awake, letting the cold air wash over half of his body while feeling the warmth of Bo's hand on his chest. And while his oversized cousin may never really grow up, he's too tender-footed to walk without a slight limp. Besides, though he claims to be fine, Luke knows from the many times that he's been on the wrong side of a fist, that noses tend to throb in time with a heartbeat the day after they've been hit.

Turkeys are safe from accidentally getting slaughtered by poorly aimed arrows that cause them unbearable pain before they die – if there's one thing their Aunt Lavinia taught them it was to make a clean kill or never to kill at all – and Duke boys are free to build a morning fire and sip at hot coffee. Warm water and the tail of Luke's shirt get after the smear of blood under Bo's nose.

"Ain't no swelling," Luke tells him. "You'll be all right."

"Don't hurt none," Bo assures him.

Oatmeal burbles as it cooks down to an edible consistency, and the sun starts to heat the land. The sky is that ridiculously clear blue that it gets up here; as if to mock two aging Duke boys, it's a perfect hunting day. Breakfast only bears but so much watching, what with it being grayish glop and holding no beauty in comparison to the world around them, so Luke lays back into the leftover dried leaves from fall, hands behind his head and staring off into the sky. It's going to take a lot more sun to warm the dirt below him back out of its near-frozen state, but the leaves are there providing a touch of insulation, and then there's Bo. Blanket wrapped around his shoulders just the same as it's been since they crawled out of the tent, he comes to settle next to him. Sitting, knuckles of his left hand grazing experimentally against Luke's arm. No surprise, it's been right there in his every gesture, how Bo wants to touch him. He's afraid, and it would all be easier if it was over a bloody nose, but it's not. Bo's been dragging around, letting his brain, of all things, get the better of him since yesterday afternoon. Waiting, apparently, for a fight that actually does come to blows.

Luke's a fool to reach for him, to let his fingers find the back of Bo's neck and give a little tug. A fool to kiss first, when Bo's lips get close enough, a fool to run his fingers through the knots in Bo's hair. Remembering how light it used to get by the end of summer, how much of it there used to be, how windy days wrought havoc with his vain cousin's attempts at achieving beauty – the boy never really did understand that he was at his best when he was windblown and wild.

One blanket covers them both as Bo relaxes there against his chest, close and warm. Lazy kisses with no ambition, tripping over each other in idle play. Long fingers there sliding between buttons on Luke's shirt, tickling at the skin he can find without putting any kind of real effort into it. All the same—

"Bo," he says, between this kiss and that one. Not that he gets taken seriously. Two tongues in his mouth, makes it harder to talk, harder to breathe, but easier to relax. Easier to let things go with the hand that comes off his chest to tip his chin, better angle now. Easy enjoy this leisurely morning ride with his cousin, until Bo nudges the accelerator. Might even be accidental how hips seem to pick up the rhythm of the kiss, rubbing tending toward grinding, but Luke has to slam on the brakes. "Bo," again, hand tangled in curls, pulling enough to free his lips and tongue. "We ain't alone in these woods."

Eyes finally open now, his cousin looks around. "Don't see no one," he drawls, hand trying to tip Luke's chin back to that place where he liked it so well.

"Bo." He could have snapped it in that same tone he always used when his cousin went ahead and dove into a fight against his advice. Would have really, except for how quiet voices seem more suited to being out here where the trees are trying to bud and birds are tending to their unhatched young. "Just because you can't see them don't mean they couldn't happen on us here. This—"

"Ain't Hazzard," comes out in unison followed by a sigh. Bo gives up the kiss that never quite managed to get started, but he doesn't go far. Chin on hands folded across Luke's chest, just quiet staring. Luke pulls his own hand out of Bo's hair, sticks it behind his head for safekeeping, in case it gets a notion to get into trouble touching parts of the man that will just start everything up all over again.

Comfortable, warm. Nothing he's in a real hurry to give up, and he reckons that if someone did come stumbling through this part of the woods – which though it isn't the depths of Hazzard in those nooks where they knew no one else had ever bothered to make their way out to, is still pretty remote – he can always explain how Bo tripped over the hem of the blanket and fell into him. Knocked him just about out cold, which is why it's taking him so long to get up.

"It ain't so awful here," Bo informs him, and that's good to know. Considering it was the man on his chest that wanted to come out hunting so bad. "If you wanted to stay. I'd get used to it, and you could keep your job." Oh.

"You figure you'd enjoy bowling on Saturday nights?" he asks. Feels his face pull into a wry little smile as Bo reacts without thought.

"That what you do?" Incredulous, then his unsubtle cousin catches himself, too late. Tries to present a neutral face when Luke already knows he's disgusted at the notion.

"Sometimes. The boys seem to like it." All right, so he hasn't done it more than a few times, but Bo might as well know just how fascinating a community this really is. "When I ain't driving around blacked out. Or looking at maps."

Squint to those dark blue eyes; Bo's not sure whether he's the butt of some kind of idiot's joke. "That really all you do?"

Hard to shrug with the solid, cold ground underneath him and the weight of a heavy cousin above, but he manages. "What do you do with your Saturday nights?"

Guilty shift of eyes, same nervous little boy Luke remembers being forced to confess to sticking gum in the Perkins girl's hair. "You know the circuit, Luke." Yeah, he does. It's not gum Bo's been sticking, and it's not hair he's been sticking it into. "Parties, bars. It ain't bowling." No, it's the extension of Bo's younger years, pursuing girls a little too zealously, trying to prove… well, it used to be a competition between Duke men, trying to accomplish a two girls to one ratio, maybe. And when Luke all but dropped out of the game, it became something else. A little frantic, somewhat self-conscious. Silly, giddy, embarrassing. That was when Luke began to drag him away by the belt, before he could make fools of them both. At least, that was the reason he gave himself. "Ain't there no bars here, cousin?"

"There's plenty of them." He's a Duke, he's got to be honest about these things. Not to mention how he's driven Bo down the bar strip of Commercial Avenue in both directions. It's not his fault that the man has no powers of observation. (Or maybe it is. All those times he told Bo which direction to turn the General's wheel, instead of letting the boy he once was learn the roads on his own.)

"Ain't you never go to none of them?"

More shrugging, more honesty. "Been to them all at one time or another, I reckon. Used to go regular to the Lamppost, but I ain't been there in a month of Sundays now." Or Thursdays, really, that was his night there. "Closest thing to the Boar's Nest, probably. Sometimes I'd get up on stage there and sing." With Anita.

Silence, Bo's digesting that one. "Where's your guitar, Luke?"

"Under the bed." There's a few things under there; some he likes to keep close and handy, others, the ones under where Bo's sleeping these days, those just got stored where they'd be out of his sight.

"You ain't played it since Anita left, right?" For all that he drove math teachers just about to killing themselves with his supposed lack of aptitude for the subject, Bo's plenty capable of getting four out of two plus two.

"Somewheres around there." He might have played it pretty close to nonstop right after she left, just alone and on his porch, his couch, and when it got worst, the bedroom. That's where he was the night he reckoned that the only way to move on was to pick up his chin from where it had gotten to resting low, watching the strings vibrate. Took a few days for his fingertips to heal over from where they'd split from pressing too hard or too often against the fret board, and after that, he'd never looked back. Much, anyway, not enough to hurt, not until the day he told Bo about her, back burning against the sun-heated metal of a car on a Los Angeles afternoon.

"What was she like?" They really need to get up out of these leaves. Two men kissing is only slightly more suspicious than two men sharing one blanket and the same six feet of ground. But not right now, not when Bo's real question is _how much did she matter and am I still in some kind of competition with her? _Payback he reckons he deserves for all but shoving images of their happiest days together under Bo's nose.

He shifts a little under the weight pressing down on him, away from that twig that's begun to dig into his shoulder blade. Hand comes out from behind his head, back of it caked in dirt, and he reckons his shirt and jeans look about the same. He smears the mess onto the blanket before letting his fingers run through that blonde hair again.

"She was different, I guess. Quiet and serious right up until the lights came on and the drummer counted eight. After that, she was a performer all the way." Bo nods, it's what he asked, but only half of what he wants to know. "Uncle Jesse would have liked her, I reckon." Then again, any girl that he thought worthy of bringing home would have made the old man happy in his declining years. The promise of the Duke line continuing, that was probably what the aging patriarch wanted most. He always acted like Daisy was the most likely candidate to accomplish it, but Luke figures that as the oldest, he was really the one who fell down on the job.

"I liked her," he admits, "plenty." Hand stroking through Bo's hair to keep him there against the tension he can feel rising in the body over his. Some instinct in Bo toward fight or flight, even if it is just a memory he wants to blacken the eye of. "If I loved her," fingers grasping just that much tighter, "I reckon I wouldn't have pushed her so hard to go." There's still a bit of conflict in the muscles of Bo's arms, deciding whether or not to push himself away from things he asked to hear, but might not want to know. "If I wanted to be with her, I could have gone on down to Nashville to live with her when she asked me to."

_Like I'm going back to Georgia with you._

Bo's body is still rigid with effort to move, but not away. Hands off Luke's chest and onto his shoulders, pulling himself up, or shoving Luke down, maybe something in between. Whatever it takes for their lips to meet, right back where they were before he put a stop to this thing. He reckons that if anyone was near enough to see what they're doing now, there'd be some indication. Birds scattering, leaves rusting, the feel and scent of other humans. He's still a good enough hunter to recognize all of that. So he lets Bo take what he needs, reassurance that he steals straight from Luke's lips so that it never needs to be said out loud.

But—"Breakfast's burning."—he figures it's not particularly smart to push their luck. And just look how kisses get forgotten in deference to an empty belly. Bo, despite appearances to the contrary, is the same hungry little boy that he's ever been.


	39. Damn Turkeys and Fool Duke Boys

Damn Turkeys and Fool Duke Boys

The march back out – though Luke swears it's nothing more than a leisurely stroll – seems to be entirely uphill. A physical impossibility, considering that he's quite sure it was uphill the whole way in. Unless, and he would not put this past the man up there in front of him, Luke has finagled a route that somehow manages to ascend full circle, starting at the bottom, which is also the top.

His nose, which he has never doubted will be just fine (even if nothing that comes into contact with a bony part of Luke in the middle of a struggle is ever the same again), throbs with every step, as a souvenir of the night. Funny how his expectations of this trip started with corn oil but may just end with cotton stuffed up his nose and a band aid covering a popped blister on his heel. Unless he can sit down long enough to adjust his sock.

He whistles a halt to the pace Luke's setting, and finds himself a fallen log on which to rest and pull his boot off. His cousin never quite settles, just picks himself a nearby tree to lean on and watch.

"I got an extra pair of socks," he offers, but Bo figures that less is more, considering the fact that his feet are swollen and sweaty, despite the way the rest of his body shivers with every stiff wind. He just makes sure there are no seams anywhere near the most tender parts of his foot, then wiggles his toes back down into place. Solid kick of his heel, and the boot's on well enough to start the march again.

Funny how, in all the times he's walked or run with Luke, through fields or over asphalt, he never bothered to notice how often his cousin takes his hand when the ground below them becomes uneven. Bo doesn't even have to tilt, much less topple, and Luke's there holding him up against the slightest threat of injury, that same _watch yourself_ he's heard since those stumbling days of childhood when his legs were always too long to keep moving in any kind of an agreed upon direction. They could have gone their whole lives without him ever recognizing it, except that every touch now leaves an itchy little spot of heat behind. Not as reassuring and safe as it used to feel to have Luke's skin against his, now it's almost more of a tease. Either he's developed a late-in-life allergy against the man he grew up no further away from than the distance from driver's seat to passenger, or he's horny as hell, wandering in woods where Luke swears they're not alone, though they haven't seen another person in the past two days.

Somewhere about the time he's ready to believe that, despite their combined woodsman's skills and moonshine runners' sense of direction, they've been walking in circles and will never get out of these woods, he sees a brightening indicating that the solid line of trunks thins in the distance. Funny how his first several days in Montana were spent wondering where the trees were; as of today he reckons he'd be happy enough never to see another one.

Now that there's a chance they'll get out of here someday (though a glance at the sun's arc - laying as low as Hazzard's gets around the winter solstice - indicates that it's not much past noon, they can't have been hiking for the weeks this has felt like) he finds walking comes easier, more quickly. Keeping up with Luke is no problem, in fact, it goes so smoothly that before he knows what has happened, he's bumping into his cousin's hard back. Dirty look over Luke's shoulder and in a minute he's going to get grumbled at for not looking where he was going, except it doesn't happen that way. Luke just points.

A clearing there, no more than a break between one clump of trees and another. Nothing worth seeing in that little space except a whole gaggle of turkeys. Now that they aren't shuffling through leaves, now that Bo's attention is focused on anything other than his feet and making them move as quickly as possible toward where Luke's Jeep is parked at the edge of the forestland, he can hear them. Damn turkeys, laughing at fool Duke boys, grown up into men that buy their meat in grocery stores.

Don't either of them bother to draw their bows or nock an arrow; they just watch the birds waddle about their own business, no concern about being killed. Word must have gotten passed around the woodland creatures about how there's nothing to fear here. Bo wraps an arm across Luke's shoulders, familiar old feel to it. Just propping himself up on his sturdy, older cousin, snickering at the foolishness of their lives. Seems like leaving Hazzard would have changed all of that for the better, but the turkeys indicate otherwise. Nothing to do but laugh back at the damn things – until Luke revs up to that head-tipped-back guffaw that scares them all away.

Fun's over, the march is on, the Jeep's still a good half mile away. As the turkey flies.

— — — —

"Luke," is like talking to the wind. No ears to hear him with, that's his stubborn older cousin. "You ain't got to—" he sighs at the wet hair on the back of Luke's head. They've only been home an hour or so, Bo's thoughts haven't strayed further than finding a comfortable place to sit and maybe some hot soup to fill his belly. One arm around Luke, or maybe two, after lunch gets eaten. A fire, and they could settle on the floor in front of it, no need to unpack the corn oil from their hunting gear; there's more in the pantry. "Sleep on it, first." Maybe a nap.

Instead they're crammed into the chilly bathroom, Luke combing out his hair in the steamed-over mirror while Bo stands behind him, doing his damnedest to stay out of the way of jutting elbows.

"Ain't no point in putting it off," is his stoic cousin's point of view on the subject. He's clothed in a white button-down shirt, black dress pants underneath. Every bit the working man, just this side of military formal. Steeling himself, maybe – hard lines and angles to him everywhere, makes it impossible to figure out how he seemed so warm and pliant under Bo's weight few hours ago, just whiling away the morning with kisses.

"You ain't got to do this." At least not now, not so close on the heels of Bo all but cornering him and demanding that he walk away from his job and the people he's grown to care about here. There's not a single person from Bo's team or crew on the NASCAR circuit who mean half as much to him as even that supposed pain-in-the-ass Marks does to Luke. "Cuz—"

"Bo!" gets growled at him, and Luke slams the comb down on the porcelain in front of him. Head drops, deep breath, then he turns to face him. Blue eyes, trying so damned hard to mask the man underneath in equal measure to the tight muscles in his face and shoulders, but it doesn't work. "Just," he's trying to be calm now, to be nice about how the veneer he likes to hide behind is cracked, leaving him raw and exposed. "Leave me be."

_Are you sure_, he wants to ask, just like Luke did two mornings ago, when Daisy had twisted him up in a knot. Knows better, _this here decision's been made Bo, just leave me to it_, is all there in the exasperation of the man, hands on hips, lips flat, head shaking. So he doesn't ask, takes his life into his hands instead. One hand there at the back of Luke's neck, little tug against the resistance there. Luke won't quite come to him, so he moves forward instead, nose to nose. Little kiss and, "I love you, Luke."

Because if the man's going to insist on doing this, at least he should remember why.


	40. Telling

Telling

It's a long drive, twice the usual distance from point A to point B, but that can be blamed on the absence of a straight line. There's Highway 1, which he could have taken directly into the heart of Anaconda, but he'd only use it if he were in a hurry to get to the heavyset man that sits behind a desk and tries to sound menacing and dangerous, mimicking whatever his idea of being a boss means. And there's no doubt that he's got to talk to Rico too, but not before he locates his boys. Who are under no obligation to spend their days at the office, not until May first, which is why Luke makes loops past all of their houses.

His pups, raised by him from the point that their mamas weaned them, come first. They always have, because any one of them takes the chance that today's jump into the mouth of hell will be their last – at Luke's command. Not a one of them yet over the age of twenty-four (and what was Luke doing at that age, other than driving wild but pointless circles around mud flats and dirt roads, escaping from a half-witted deputy and a broken old sheriff in pursuit of nothing worth having, really – but then Bo was with him, and there was no place else he wanted to be) with a firm belief in their own immortality, and complete trust in his leadership. They've earned the right to hear it straight from him.

The extra miles of his trip serve no purpose other than to delay the inevitable. Not a sign of any of his boys at home or on the street, and it's time he crossed over the railroad tracks to the industrial side of town. Familiar bump and sway of potholed parking lot, and it's not really all that surprising to see the usual cars there. The kids don't have to spend their days here, but they like to feel close to whatever the action might be, even if it's just a half a dozen men sitting around telling fish stories. Seems like he and Bo wasted plenty of their own youth engaged in just about the same activity, down at Cooter's garage.

The same mockingly perfect blue sky that hung over the lazy morning up in the state forest greets him when he climbs out of his Jeep. Reminds him of playing hooky on the first nice day of Georgia spring, makes him think of how Bo wanted him to wait before doing this. Must make sense in his cousin's Hazzard-raised mind, formed by the never ending games that their hometown inspired, but somewhere along the way, Luke learned responsibility. Hard things first, get them over with and then the easy things are just that much easier without the dread hanging over them. Still, if there was ever a day to skip out and disappear between one ridge and the next, this would be it.

Deep breath, holding it long enough to warm in his lungs, then back out and up the stairs to the place he's collected his paycheck for the last fourteen years.

The boys don't flock to him this time; the pack welcome-back greeting ceremony has already been enacted, and he hasn't brought his exciting, NASCAR driving, semi-celebrity of a cousin with him either. But they're there, watching as he comes in the door. Three of them, anyway, are easy to spot, though he knows they're all here somewhere.

"S'up, Duke," Conklin greets, a hormonal boy's crack-voiced attempt to play it cool, long body lounging across a chair in a way that would likely make his mother swat him with a spatula. But those eyes, round, brown, peering out from underneath those stringy bangs (and if Luke had a right to, he'd be sending the kid out for a haircut right about now), those are watchful. Waiting.

"Where's Smit?" The missing member of his team, but his car's out there, so he's got to be messing around in one of these rooms, maybe dismantling the scanner again. Half a mind for electronics, that's his youngest team member. Can get stuff apart, but putting it back together is outside of his skills or interest. All the same he's a good kid, even if he is a touch too energetic to be sitting in an office. Just like Bo, he needs a wide range of space to roam around in.

Conklin just shrugs in answer to his question, so he looks to Wiggins.

The redhead's open mouth suggests that the kid has an answer for Luke, but he doesn't get much of a chance to get it out.

"Duke," booms from the back office; Rico playing at being the tough-guy boss again. Luke reckons that if the man hadn't gained all that weight, didn't huff for breath with every movement he makes, he wouldn't tolerate the kind of yelling he does. Still, something about it carries the nostalgia of Jesse in his older years, hollering ahead because his body just couldn't get where it wanted to be fast enough. And threatening to tan hides, even if the mere attempt would probably kill him.

"Stand by," he yells back, military lingo, but it has always fit in just fine here. Then again, Rico Marinez is not a patient man. He's not going to stand by forever.

"So what's it going to be, Duke?" Marks asks him. Fair enough question, the boy's figured out that answer time has arrived.

Dang it all, he wants Smitty here, but waiting any longer is likely to bring Rico waddling out and demanding the kind of words he doesn't want to say in front of his boys. So he just comes out with it.

"I ain't renewing." Quiet nods, Wiggins looks away. "I'm going home," is maybe easier to take, he figures. "I ain't—" happy about it, he almost says, but that's not quite right. "I'm going to miss y'all," he says instead. "It's been a pleasure…"

Stupid words, they don't mean anything. Don't give his boys any comfort, they're just rough sounds that smack them upside their heads same as if he'd used a fist.

"You've been a great team," he settles for, and it's still just as flat as a river stone, just as treacherous of a tripping hazard. He all but falls over it himself, throat raw, eyes burning. Marks saves him, and damn it if that boy doesn't have potential under all that obnoxious self-assurance.

"Duke," the boy says, standing to look him in the eyes. "You've been a good leader. Good luck." It's almost funny, really. _Good luck going home to Bo_. Except that's not what the kid means, it's just his best I'm-being-a-good-sport approach to accepting the news.

Luke offers a hand to shake; this here boy deserves to be treated like a man. Gets a hug instead, unexpected grip of arms around him. Reminds him that Marks wasn't always such a cocky bastard. First time Luke took him on a real jump, the kid barreled out of the plane just fine, had a natural knack for winds aloft, knew how to catch a current. Landed fine too, looked like a natural. First day on the ground, he was the star rookie, wielding his Pulaski as casually as if he were chopping wood in the Dukes' farmyard. But the fire jumped the hot line, and day two was one hell of a lot rougher. Resorting to backpack pumps, the team had to back track against the greed of the fire, eating up the tiny bits of brush they didn't have time to clear. Luke sent his most senior jumper, an older guy named Davis, to out ahead of the fire to work out their distance from Round Hill Lake, which he knew they'd flown over on their way in. If they could get close to it, he'd call for a power pump.

Marks, he kept that kid close, because he was flagging. The closer the fire line came to where they'd set up to fight it, the more the boy's face faded back toward the paleness of the smoke around them. They got lucky, the wind shifted, sending the flames back over already burned ground where there was nothing left to feed it. Eventually the rains came, and they could leave the fire to the local fighters. They backpacked out.

The pickup point was about two miles off, on County Route 212, when Marks started to stumble. Luke made him sit, gave him water, then oxygen. The kid vomited up the power bar he'd eaten for energy that day, and it started to look like he might need an IV to get himself rehydrated. More oxygen, Luke reteaching him how to breathe, because somehow he was doing it all wrong, not enough oxygen going in. Took longer than he wanted it to, maybe a full half hour, for Marks to get his lungs working right, steady breaths. More water, and he kept it down. Luke had been about to send the rest of the guys on ahead to see if the truck they were meeting could make it back here, or whether they would need a chopper to get them out, when Marks told him he expected that, if they went slow, he could walk out.

Watching the ashen boy walk out that day was downright painful, but he made it. Luke reckoned that it was the kid's first and last jump, but after a couple of days rest, Marks was back in the office. He let Luke make the case for why it wouldn't be failure if he quit now, how being a local firefighter instead of a jumper wasn't exactly shameful. He let Luke talk a blue streak, but he didn't listen to a damned word. And when the next call came, he was still on the team, so Luke took him. Made it known he had a potential weak link on his team, so the other guys out there would look out for them, but there was no need. Marks was fine.

"It was the smoke," he confessed later. "The smell of it, especially after. That heavy, burnt stench." Seemed like he learned to tolerate it, or maybe just plain expect it.

Hard to believe that weak kneed kid of three years ago is about to be bucking for Luke's job, but there's no doubt he'll put his name in. No way he'll get it, but he's sure he's ready for it now. This boy, right here in his arms, might just be Luke's biggest accomplishment since the day he and Bo put the last detailed touches on the General Lee's paint and called him done.

"Thanks, Marks," he whispers. _Michael_, he thinks. _You're not really an awful kid for being such a pain in the ass._

After Marks comes Wiggins, who shakes his hand before slinging one arm around his neck. "I'll miss the hell out of you, Duke," he whispers. "You come back and see us sometime." Sounds so much like something one of his old Hazzard neighbors would say that it makes Luke smile.

Conklin's all gangly arms and legs, not bothering with a handshake. "I'll make you proud," the boy tells him, close to his ear so his insecurities can stay a secret, just between them.

"I know you will," Luke answers, same tone, though he figures the rest of his boys can hear just fine.

Including Smitty, who's suddenly there in front of him. Must've shown up sometime in the middle of this sad little scene, and it looks like he's got it pretty well figured out, too.

"So you're leaving, then?" is half a question, but mostly the pitch of it dips down at the end. "Well, I hope you're happy in Georgia." It's not a jibe, not angry sarcasm, but not entirely genuine, either. Just words. Words and a hand, and when Luke tries to turn the offered shake into a hug, the kid lets him go. "Martinez was calling you," is the excuse Smitty gives him for abruptness.

"He'll wait," Luke informs the boy, but he just gets a shaking head in response.

"Go on," he says. _Leave already if you're going to abandon me_. Smit turns his head to find out what Marks is up to, sitting at the same desk he was when Luke entered the room. "We got work to do here."

After that, telling Rico is easy. Even if the man does bluster and holler, yelling at Luke about how he could have given him more warning, and now he's going to have to start PT training with these boys himself, while he waits for a transfer to get authorized.


	41. Peace with a Chance for Chaos

Peace with a Chance for Chaos

A good soldier marching off to his doom, that's always been Luke. Shoulders squared, head held high by ramrod straight neck and back. Calm, prepared, and if Bo equates that look with defeat, it's not entirely his fault. It's the same way the boy his cousin once was marched off to the bus that took him off to Parris Island and basic training. Same stance he took when he stood and let himself be handcuffed the night the two of them got caught with enough moonshine in old Sweet Tilly to put them away for ten years. Resigned.

He might, just might, return in that same condition. Alternately, Luke could come home squint-eyed, accusing, raring for a fight. Drunk, if he was younger, tipping a mason jar in salute to the moon, liquor to tie his own hands behind his back, numbing them against effective use for violence. Except it never really worked – if Luke had reason to lash out at something, he hardly needed his own consciousness to draw blood. Aside from knowing that he won't be anything like happy, Bo has no idea what state his self-sacrificing cousin will come home in.

Which leaves him trying to decide how, exactly, to prepare for a prediction of peace with a chance of chaos. He reckons an umbrella won't be enough to weather whatever's coming.

Part of the problem, and it should only be a small part except it grows with the lengthening afternoon, is that, whether his cousin is sad-eyed or tight-muscled, Bo has no idea when to expect him home. After a shower to wash away the stench of a failed hunt – though a certain amount of nostalgia might have him preferring to keep the scent of wood smoke clinging to his skin – he is at a loss for what to do with himself.

Dinner (and Charleen's beef stew has been teasing at his memory since skipped lunch) is a possibility that gets dismissed almost before the idea is fully formed. The next is to chop some wood for a fire, but how much? How many hours will he need to keep it going before Luke finds his way home? And anyway, it's not his warm-blooded cousin that's been shivering since the day they got here.

Honestly, about the only thing he can work out to do is to wash their dirty (and still ugly; unfortunately, the grime it picked up didn't dull away the unsightliness) hunting clothes, dirt-stained from rolling on the ground this morning. Hearing the washer's cycle, a rhythm now nearly as familiar as his own breathing, he can't help but feel that this right here is the only thing he's done since arriving in Opportunity a week ago. Domestic chores, and while Daisy would be proud of him, he reckons that this is the last time he'll sit through the rattle and clank of zippers against the metal drum, just waiting for the spin cycle to end. Dang it, before Montana, he can't swear that he used to words 'spin' and 'cycle' in the same sentence, unless he was talking about the turning radius of a dirt bike.

For all that he doesn't want Luke's decision to walk away from his job to be made based on demands made in the middle of a stupid argument, he suspects his cousin's actually got something of a point with regard to him and this particular part of the country. Oh sure, he's curious about the land, with its violently jutting landscape of randomly tossed boulders. But in truth it holds no secrets; this place is exactly what it seems. Empty, barren, desiccated. The kind of location where Luke Duke, former 'shine runner, performer of foolishly dangerous stunts, former NASCAR pit crew chief and county-wide schemer, could actually be reduced to reading maps for entertainment. An interesting enough place to visit, but Bo's not going to miss the drudgery of southwest Montana, not one bit. As an honest man, he'd be forced to admit that he's not in the least sorry that Luke didn't take him up on his offer to stay here. If anyone asked, and he's banking on the notion that no one will.

And while Luke seems to have reasons to like the area, there's no doubt in Bo's mind that it hasn't been good for the man, hiding out here this long. Putting on a five-star show of self-sufficiency for a bunch of kids that admire him, but in the end he's nothing bigger nor smaller than a lonely man who's pretending not to be. These boys of Luke's, they're young yet, but they're plenty strong. Well-trained, certainly, under his cousin's protective wing. They'll move up in the system, gain rank and progress beyond Luke's team, only to be replaced by new, equally naïve youngsters. Five years at a time, maybe, before Luke has to start over with fresh rookies, and then teach them everything they need to know to move on. To leave Luke behind. And in the end, Luke'll wind up knowing, distantly, a bunch of grateful men a generation younger than him that are so caught up in their admiration of their former leader that they'll never recognize that he's fallible, too. Lonely, as lost as any of them were in their earliest days of working for the service.

Luke leaving this place will be good for him, there's no doubt about it. Except it'll bring on those second thoughts that always eat at him. Bo reckons that this evening will be dedicated to trying his damnedest to make his cousin forget those.

But before that can happen, Luke's going to have to walk through the door. More hours to kill, just waiting, and if he'd rather spend them outside, that's only natural. He's a Duke, raised to love land, speed, good whiskey and each other. Even if it's just to let loose some poorly aimed arrows, the fresh air calls him outside. Sure, his feet are still tender from the morning, but pacing around hardwood floors isn't a whole lot less painful than another hike would be. If he could take one, but he can't.

The General, that's what he and Luke forgot to bring along when they came out here. Shoot, any car would do, just so he didn't end up pinned to the cabin every time Luke leaves.

Then again, even if he had a fleet of cars lined up on the loose dirt and rough grass of the driveway, one for each color of the rainbow, he couldn't take them out for even the shortest spin, just like he can't go walking the ridge out there. Not that Luke's asked him to or anything (not that Luke ever would), but Bo figures he needs to be here whenever those tired, heavy footsteps clunk themselves up the stairs, kicking nonexistent dirt off of shiny black dress shoes. He hasn't the first idea what he'll do when that happens but he suspects he ought to stick close, regardless of whether it's peace or chaos that Luke brings.

Somewhere around dark his cousin shows up without either, really. Through the door, closed behind him, and as if that small of a movement has sapped the last of his energy, Luke just stands there. Bo stays where he stood when he first heard the squeal of Jeep brakes – leaning against the wide archway to the kitchen. Near, but with no intention of touching anywhere on that rigid, hard body, wound up tight and just looking for the right object to release itself against.

The Dukes stand like that, three paces apart, long enough for Bo to see the exhaustion there behind the surface tension. Looks like one of those rare days in their youth when someone actually managed to pull the wool over Luke's eyes, using his temporary blindness to overcome resistance and break his older cousin's heart.

Finally, the man shifts. Nothing more than bearing his weight on one leg, then the other. "Honey," he says. "I'm home. How was your day?"


	42. Redlined

Redlined

Bo's engine's been redlined all afternoon, running hot and strained. He's still at high idle now, tense, worried. Luke Duke, after all, is known for his ugly temper that flares with the least provocation. The kind of thing that can only be tamed with a strap, one that gets thicker with each mule-stubborn year of his life.

Except even their frustrated old uncle retired his heaviest lash somewhere around the time that the military entangled itself with the Duke family. Basic training in efficient violence, and then there was the practical course, and if Luke ever had any desire to cause deliberate harm, it got taken right out of him in the years he spent there. Then again, Bo's known him long enough to remember one overheated afternoon when his big cousin took a swipe at him with a baseball bat. The crime, as he recalls, was mouthing off; a few snide words, one of which might have been 'sissy.'

Fidgeting sets into Bo's long fingers, because some part of the man has to be moving. It wants to be his mouth talking, asking Luke for answers, some kind of plot, and _what do we do now, cuz? You done quit your job, left your team high and dry, and tolerated the tantrums of a man that's old enough to know better, so what's the plan?_

All that concern bottled there wraps just as hot and close around Luke as long arms ever did, leaving him a mite guilty about the beer he stopped for on the way home, one growing into two, sipped slowly in the company of a bartender with no more interest in hearing Luke's troubles than he had in telling them. Quiet time to stare at bubbles in their slow ascent from where they were pressed against the glass until they pushed their way topside through amber liquid, far enough up to reunite themselves with the air above. More of them appeared with each tilt of the glass until the bubbles won and there was nothing left in the mug except air. Time to go home.

Should have brought his beer with him; the cabin's tight, airless, and could use some carbonation to make it breathable again.

"Come on," he says, reaching behind him to grab onto the same doorknob he held in his fingers less than a minute ago. "I'm gonna buy you the best damn steak you ever put into your mouth."

Breath gets expelled over there and Luke can't tell whether it's been held in anticipation of whatever brilliant scheme he was supposed to concoct, or whether it's more of a sigh.

"I can make you steak, if that's what you want, Luke." Which settles it down to having been more of a huff. "Cooked just like you like it." Which is somewhere beyond raw, but less well done than shoe leather. And it's true, after years of hearing him and Daisy go at it over steaks that got pulled out of the oven too early to be much more than bloody, Bo has got to know better than anyone how Luke likes his meat. Everyone, that is, except Sherrie.

"Don't take it personal," Luke suggests. "I'm sure that Susie or Sarah or Sally or somesuch taught you some fine steak-making skills. Still, I figure that unless you start with the right raw materials, ain't no way you can make what I'm about to get you. And the kind of cuts they got down at the Anaconda Diner, you can't get them in stores. Come on, Bo," because they're both still standing there, glued down like bubbles that haven't realized that it's their time to rise yet. "My treat."

"You ain't," hesitation there. Bo's pupils flicking back and forth from one of Luke's eyes to the other. Nervous little tic that his cousin doesn't even know he has. "You ain't got no more money coming in. Do you?"

Interesting concern, careful question. Like maybe Bo wonders whether his last few hours have been spent signing a contract, to be followed by running off to douse a spontaneous blaze before coming home. Then again, maybe he has a right to wonder about that, considering there are a couple of missing hours in his tally of Luke's day. No beer ever seems to go unpunished.

"I ain't got no more money coming in," he assures Bo, but the other half of the implication of his cousin's question still nags at him. No income, but it's not like when they were hardly more than boys and the loss of whiskey money left them teetering on the edge of broke for the better part of a decade. He's been earning a good income here, sending chunks of it off to fix up the old farmhouse and help Daisy make her way through graduate school, but there's plenty squirreled away, too. Shoot, he can afford to take the two of them out for steak every night for the rest of their lives. Maybe. It might just depend on whether Bo's appetite gets even more ferocious with age. "But I ain't going broke over a steak dinner neither," he finishes, putting a stop to any fantasies his daydreaming cousin might have of rescuing him from the poorhouse. "Come on," he adds, pointing to the flannel shirt Bo likes so much, hanging on the back of a kitchen chair. "Get a move on."

In truth, he figures that getting Bo out of the house is a good idea for them both. After all, nothing sticky ever got said in the Boar's Nest, and any fights their younger selves had took place within the safe confines of the farm, never in public. A short drive is all the time they have to snipe at each other, and Bo helps matters by keeping mostly to himself over there. Still pouting over Luke's insult to his cooking skills, no doubt, but that matter will be solved soon enough.

Sherrie greets them at the door as usual; hard lines to her face, but she's the sweetest woman Luke's known since moving west, and she claims to have a sixth sense about when he's coming. "Always got a steak on the grill for you, honey," she's fond of saying, but tonight she's all but salivating over Bo. "You didn't tell me how handsome he was," she scolds after they've been introduced, but she's seen the same old photos that everyone else has, so his cousin's pretty face is not really a surprise to her. Her cheek pinching, quick hugging ways might catch Bo off-guard, but it only lasts for a second or two before he's hugging back. Man has always been shameless when it comes to giving the ladies what they want.

Because it's Tuesday, because it's his one-hundredth visit, because he's brought his cousin along – there's always a reason for Sherrie to wink and tell him he's entitled to a discount, and tonight it's two-for-one. Most days he fights her on it, southern manners asserting themselves until she threatens to clobber him with a frying pan if he doesn't take what she's offering. Tonight he just thanks her and lets her show him where she wants the Duke boys to sit. No surprise that it's a table that can be seen from the window into the kitchen. Bo, he notes, is guided to the seat where Sherrie will have an unobstructed view of his face.

"The usual?" she asks.

"Times two," he agrees. Bo's not happy about being ordered for over there, and his eyebrows come down to prove it. That's okay; his mind'll change after the first bite. "Plus a couple of beers." Selecting his own brand of suds seems to settle Bo back out of that snit he was considering working up to.

"Be right back with it." And his surrogate mother is gone, leaving two Dukes to stare at each other.

"Interesting place," is Bo's attempt at breaking the silence, reminding Luke of first dates that never made it to seconds. Next he'll be commenting on the wood panel walls covered in amateurish horse and cowboy paintings, someone's fantasy of the American west. After that it'll be the faux leather, in a strange shade of red, that covers the seats of the booths along the far wall. Eventually Bo will discover the mirror that runs the length of the opposite wall and all conversation will cease as he sits there to admire himself. The night will end with a forced peck on the cheek and Luke will drop him off on some random porch, one with a light on and perhaps a protective father inside. It'll be like old days.

He's saved from stupid musings about nothing useful by the sound of his own name. Sort of; actually, it's the one that he and Bo share.

"Duke," makes them both turn their heads, but it's Luke Smitty's calling to. Hand out, shaking like they're meeting for the first time. "You remember my wife, Michelle," he introduces, and of course Luke does. She makes terrific spaghetti and meatballs, and otherwise has no particularly distinguishing features. Other than the odd bowl cut hairstyle she's wearing, and that must have ruined Smitty's whole day, considering how she's got less hair now than Luke does.

"Hey, Michelle," he greets, taking her small hand in his. Cold and pale, but he can imagine how Smitty enjoys warming it between his. "This is my cousin, Bo."

It's like flipping a switch: the flirting machine comes on. Bright-eyed, face-cracking grin over there from Bo's side of the table, and Michelle swoons. Sherrie probably does, too, back in the kitchen. Their only chance of eating tonight lies with the hope that she doesn't faint back there and smack her head on the linoleum-lined concrete floor.

"Well hello, young lady," Bo croons, and Michelle's getting dagger-eyed glances from every woman in the place.

"Don't mind him," Luke tells her, or maybe it's for Smitty's benefit that he says it. "He's just been cooped up all day, doing housework. You know how that is."

Bo's not amused, but Michelle is. Smitty smirks, a hard curve of a smile, and it's no surprise that when Luke invites the couple to join him and Bo, the offer gets rejected. "See you around," Smitty tells him instead.

Fortunately, Sherrie seems to have managed to stay upright; maybe she was focused on their putting their dinner under the broiler when Bo flashed that magnetic smile of his.

"Here you go, sweetie," she says, putting a bottle of beer in front of each of them. There's absolutely no reason for her to be doing the waitressing tonight; Luke can see Karen goofing off and chatting with a couple of weathered looking cowboys in the corner, but then again, Sherrie always has treated him and his boys particularly well. "It's nice to have family around, ain't it?" Yes and no – he likes having Bo around just fine when there haven't just been two different women cozying up to him in the past three minutes. "Your cousin there," she says to Bo. "Needs you to come around more often. Ever since his girl left him," great, just great. He's finally gotten Bo to halfway calm down about Anita. "He's lonely."

It's not even true, but it makes Bo smile at him. One of those games has started up, the kind his cousin makes up all the rules to, and always wins. _See, Luke? She says you need me. Bet I can get all the girls in this place to agree with her._ But it's better than dealing with a jealous Bo, so Luke just lets it go.

"She's cute," gets stage-whispered to him the minute Sherrie's gone, and it's not clear whether Bo's talking about the cook or the wife of Luke's former employee. Doesn't matter, Luke recognizes it for what it is: awkwardness. Funny how it's taken him so long to see it, but there it is, shining right through the amber liquid in the bottle his cousin's just tipped up. Bo is out of his element here. About the only thing he can figure out to do is flirt with the ladies, young or old. Otherwise he's lost in this small town, aimless among strangers.

"How do you handle being out on the road?" Of course, Bo doesn't even halfway understand the question, or its origin. "Going to all them races in cities where you don't know no one? What do you do with yourself?"

Stupid question, probably one he doesn't want to know the answer to. It'll likely be about how he doesn't have to know anyone except the groupies that hang out along the rail of the stands, standing there long before the race starts in nothing more than tube tops and tight shorts. Wink at them before getting called into the pit for the driver's meeting, flash them a smile on one lap or another, meet them at the gates long after the track's gone dark for the night. No skills of conversation required, it's all about finding a horizontal place to lie. Luke remembers those days just fine.

"You know what it's like. Mostly the team sticks together." Yeah, that's true enough, though he never much thought about it that way. He and Bo were new back then, rookies looking to learn the ropes. They kept close to each other and stayed in the vicinity the more senior men, trying to act a lot more experienced than they really were. "I suppose, if there was a Sherrie back in Atlanta, she'd tell you I was lonely, too."

Well, yeah, but Bo's always been the lonely sort. Too many years spent sharing everything from a bedroom to breathing space, and his cousin never did quite figure out how to do anything alone. Luke, despite Sherrie's assertions, is not so much lonely as a loner.

Dinner arrives – carried in plump arms that really do remind him of Aunt Lavinia's every time he gets hugged by them – sparing them further conversation. And in a minute Bo's declaring love, and whether it's for the steak of Sherrie, no one can tell because his mouth's full. Once Luke informs him it's bison meat he's savoring it turns into an avowal of love for the animal anyway.

But the awkwardness follows them home and right into the bed. Luke reckons that turning out the light and counting sheep until they're both snoring is the best plan, holds out hope on that solution for a few minutes until Bo's rolling over on his back to talk.

"Luke," has the same hesitant sound the man's been using all night. Hard to believe it was just this morning they were huddling together in the dirt of the state forest. "You want to?"

Interesting that Bo would think so, considering that Luke's all but poised on the edge of the bed, facing away from him. Of course, his teenaged, horny performance from earlier in the week would seem to encourage that assumption.

He rolls to his back and gives Bo a skeptical look, one that asks why he'd think sex could make it any easier that he's just given up the main thing that's made his life worth living these past fourteen years. But of course, it's too dark for his cousin to see the flatness of his lips or how low his eyebrows have dropped, so fingers come over to rub against his arm anyway. Not sure what they're supposed to be doing, arousing or soothing, and the answer is closer to neither, so Luke grabs onto that hand, rolls one more time to face Bo, so he can just hold onto it, resting down on the mattress between them.

Now that his hand's immobilized, Bo's mouth is free to yap. "Smitty's a nice enough kid. Doesn't say much though, does he?"

Which is the least accurate assessment of the motor-mouth that Luke's ever heard, but then again, the kid wasn't himself tonight, what with Luke tendering his resignation followed by Bo charming the socks (and given time he there might have been more articles of clothes that got lost) off his wife.

But no part of Luke wants to talk about it, so he shifts, tugs at Bo. Winds up on his back with a blonde head on his shoulder and a long arm across his chest. His fingers find the nape of Bo's neck and play in the hair there until pent up words turn into deep, steady breaths, leaving Luke the quiet space he's been looking for all night.


	43. Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams

_It's warm, finally. Not in a simply skin-deep kind of way, either, but the kind of heat that can be smelled. Daisy's banging around with a pot and one of those oversized spoons she uses to whack his fingers when he steals food straight off her stove. Talking, she's going on nonstop about something. The words aren't clear, but she's happy, and so is Bo. Jesse sits in his usual chair at the end of the table answering back to Daisy, and Luke's – somewhere. Not that he's visible or anything, but it's dinner time, or maybe dinner's just finished, and Luke's got to be close, just a steady heartbeat in a room where everyone else is active. _

_Leaning back in his chair, arms behind his head and the smell goes from being generic warm oven to having a distinct pie sort of a smell. Boysenberry, and he's not sure why he suddenly knows this, but he does. Too sweet, Luke always complains, but somehow he manages to eat plenty anyway. It's not the kind of thing that can be sworn to, but Bo has a pretty good feeling that he's the only one that knows how Luke's likely to eat wild berries straight off the bush whenever they manage to get out camping in late June._

_Giggles, Daisy's ruffling his hair, making a fine mess of it. It's just about ready, she says, or maybe he just knows it to be true. Luke's laugh rattles out, close enough to feel even if he still can't be seen. Could be that the room gets that much warmer when the oven opens. Daisy's beaming smile, Uncle Jesse's warning him, something about hot, but it doesn't matter as he reaches out for the slice of pie he's being handed. Trying to get a grip, but the plate keeps moving, shifting under his hand. Holding on takes all of his strength, fingers, hand, arm and shoulder, and still he's losing ground. _

_"Luke," he says, and doesn't know why, whether he's asking for help or assigning blame, but it doesn't matter because he's not there, and neither are Jesse or Daisy, or for that matter the kitchen. Which, when he thinks about it, is yellow now, not white, and then there's the fact that the refrigerator's bigger and the oven's on the other side…_

"Luke," he repeats, and this time it makes perfect sense to him. The body under his is doing its damnedest to slip away without waking him. That's just sneaky, but then he's not entirely sure whether it's that or the pie that he was just about to get and is now lost forever that bothers him.

That mental debate gets lost in a hurry to the realization that if he doesn't grab hold quick, Luke will be gone. "Quit it," he snaps about the movement around him, because at that moment his only goal is to still it long enough to go back to sleep.

There's an artificial calm then, Luke settling into some approximation of the position he was in back when Bo was dreaming of boysenberries and a kitchen that he and Luke systematically destroyed. One that was sweaty in summer and caught every freezing valley breeze in winter, with dirty and ill-fitting windows, scarred floorboards, a temperamental stove and a table that would tip and rock mercilessly unless the shim was properly in place under the short leg. A kitchen that served generation after generation of Dukes, but it's not there anymore. It's been replaced by something yellow, modern, shiny, ugly. There is no pie, hasn't been warmth in that room for fifteen years. Damn it all, if he could go back, he would have pinned Luke against that gap-boarded wall next to the sink, kissed him right then and there, never allowed either one of them to leave, and insisted that no one ever change a single damned thing about that kitchen.

But Uncle Jesse still would have died, because time passed, old men's bones got weak and ached, and no one lived forever. It's a new lesson, one that still smarts every time he goes back over it, because Dukes never got around to dying of old age before. Accidents and illness took them young and if that didn't happen, there was nothing in the history of the family to say they couldn't live forever. Until they lost Jesse.

There's no way in hell he's going back to sleep, despite the fact that the conspicuously still body next to his wants him to. "Luke," he says, and if his tone of voice makes his cousin's hand come up into his hair as some kind of a comforting gesture, that's a tactical mistake on his part. "Where was you going?"

"Nowhere," is the kind of lie that Dukes aren't allowed to tell, not to each other. "Just the living room," is more like it.

The sheets slip under his hand as he shoves against them, the blanket's half lost in the process, but he manages to get more of his weight onto Luke. "You need to sleep," he observes. "You was up half of last night, too." He kicks against the tangle his legs have gotten caught in; he wants the blanket around his shoulders, but even more than that, he wants to hold onto Luke.

A mumbled, "Didn't mean to wake you," isn't the point at all, even if there were pies in that other place, juicy, hot, and waiting to be eaten. And that hand in his hair isn't playing fair either, trying to lull him back into that warm place where Daisy's laugh tinkles in the way it did before someone broke her heart and left her behind, where Jesse's eyes crinkle at the corners even when he's trying to be stern. It was a nice place, with most everything he could have wanted, except Luke. Or, Luke was there and not at the same time, invisible for no reason other than he was hiding himself.

So he fights against the hand, stops worrying about the blankets, and pushes the better part of his weight onto that warm chest under his. Hands folded under his chin, and Luke's shoulders all but pinned by his elbows. The hand falls out of his hair, but not far, the warmth of it settles on Bo's bare upper arm. If he'd known he was going to have to do without a blanket he might have worn more than a t-shirt to bed.

"How'd they take it?" Those boys Luke's been leading for the last few years, the ones who look to him for more than just how to jump from an airplane or fight a fire, the kids he had to tell first, before officially resigning.

Movement under him, but he ignores it. It's a shrug, or the closest his cousin can come to one around the way Bo's weighting him down. Luke would like to make the gesture the whole of his answer, but Bo doesn't move, doesn't acknowledge the feel of its echoing ripples through his own arms. Waits, silently, for a real answer to his question.

"All right, I guess," isn't much, but it's better than a shrug. "They didn't say much. It was Rico that blew his stack." There's a funny lopsided breath under him, might be an attempt at a chuckle getting squeezed out from under Bo's weight, or the weight of Luke's own thoughts. "He don't like things he don't control."

Yeah, well, it must be a good enough trait in a smoke jumper, because Luke's always been the same way.

"Smitty didn't exactly seem happy tonight," Bo ventures. "Seems like maybe he didn't take it all that well." Came right across the table at him in the way those eyes fixed on his, just about accusing him of taking Luke away.

"I don't know how Smitty took it," Luke answers. "He didn't say."

_And how did _you_ take it_, Bo wants to ask, but no amount of perching on Luke's chest, unmoving and waiting, will make his cousin answer that one. "I could get used to the cold," he says instead. "It ain't that bad. And if we brought the General out here, so's I had my own wheels, I'm sure I'd grow to like it. It's pretty enough."

The movement under him is most definitely laughter this time. "Pretty," Luke chuckles, and his head is shaking at the humor behind it all. "You always was partial to pretty things, wasn't you?" Sure enough, he likes things that are pleasant to look at, but there's nothing wrong with that. Luke's eyes are pretty, and he's spent the better part of his life looking into those. "But the General, he wouldn't stand a chance out here."

"Why not? He's been the fastest car in Georgia all his life." He can hardly believe he has to defend the General's honor to Luke, of all people. "What makes Montana so special?"

Damn that laughter, sounding every bit like the reverberation from his dream, but not half as pleasant now that he knows it's at his expense. "Montana ain't special, Bo. You just ain't seen snow yet. Not to worry, you might still. It piles up deep, drifts, stays. Melts down on the roads then freezes over to solid ice for days and weeks. The poor General – well first we'd have to build him a garage, and then he'd have to live there for about eight months out of the year." Laughter's gone now, that next thing is a heaving sigh. "Don't matter none." There's a shove and push, and Luke's got an arm free. Hand up in his hair again, just tangling there. "I know you'd stay if I asked you to, Bo. I ain't asking."

_How come_, he considers asking, but Luke's settling into the darkness now, no longer trying to slip away from him in the night, and that might be the best outcome he can hope for at the moment. Deep discussions that threaten to rev up to arguments can wait until the blinding light of day, where his cousin can twist and turn them until he has studied every facet, then make himself a plan of action. Or maybe just confess to the one he's already made.

"What's it gonna take to make you sleep?" he asks instead, freeing one of his hands to cup Luke's jawbone. Nothing more than that; it's an offer, not a demand or even a request.

More laughter, vibrating from one set of ribs to the other. It's not a no.

"What?" he challenges. "I bet it works." And digs his elbows into the bed to give himself leverage. Resting there, breathing the same hot air that Luke is, noses touching, and if there was any light to speak of, he'd be seeing double for being that close. Waiting, because it's nothing more than an offer.

A tilt of Luke's chin and there are lips on his, gentle, slow in how they approach, but not lingering. A quick, sweet kiss, testing out whether he really means it.

"I bet," Luke says, "it works better on you than me."

Which isn't really fair, what with how Bo was dreaming of sweet pies a few minutes ago while Luke was busy thinking sour thoughts. He's a heck of a lot closer to sleep than his cousin is, but then again, he's never been one to let lousy odds deter him from besting the smug one in the past. He kisses his acceptance of the challenge right back at Luke.

Now that their lips have found each other, he can let go of where his hand's been guiding Luke's chin. Warm skin, funny how Bo's wearing more and can still feel the cool air soaking through his shirt and onto his back, but Luke's naked torso radiates its own heat. Nothing new in that, still, he lets his hand glide over all that heat, drinking it in through his palm, then up Luke's arm until he finds a wrist, a hand. Links his fingers through there and uses the superior position to improve the angle between them.

Kissing, slow, serious as church. Gentle, quiet, and just when it feels like it might never get anywhere, Luke's hand is out of his hair, nudging at his chin to let his lips find sensitive skin along his neck. Tickling drag of tongue across the short hairs there, and if he'd really planned this properly, he would have shaved sometime over the endless stretch of afternoon. Now he's at the mercy of his own body, wiggling in response to the touch. The feel of Luke's smile there against his skin doesn't help; neither does the puff of laughed air from his nose.

Balancing his weight on the hand woven into Luke's, he grabs hold of the opposite elbow. Follows the length of arm up to the wrist, then pulls until he's got it pinned against the bed. It's a slow-motion wrestling match, nothing like the fast-moving struggles for dominance of their youth, back before bruises hurt or pulled muscles lingered for more than the few minutes it took to stretch them back out of the knots they got tied in.

Those blankets that bound his knees have finally gotten kicked far enough out of the way to allow him to slip a knee down on either side of Luke's hips, and just like that, his neck's out of teasing range. Below him is the expanse of Luke, just waiting to be explored. Never mind that his hands are currently occupied; there's more than one way to learn Luke. The journey starts at the collarbone notch, testing little kiss that doesn't get half the response that the tongue that follows it generates. Hiss like getting singed, and then Luke's breath comes a little shallower. Hard shoulder, more muscle than flesh, doesn't do a lot for either of them, but the hollow there between shoulder and neck makes Luke take in a shuddering breath.

He uses his mouth to make a map of the body below his, its hills and curves, gullies and then there's a cliff right there at the base of Luke's ribcage, where his stomach's sucking down against the gentle assault of lips and tongue. Smaller ridges below that, but he follows the center dip, slow, soft, persistent kisses, tongue, puff of air.

Bellybutton gets neglected, but it's not his fault. Next kiss might have landed there if Luke hadn't chosen that moment to shove up against his hands, changing his balance. A knee comes into play, then everything's toppling, rolling, and even if it's just mattress that's about to hit his back, Luke breaks his fall. Gentle landing, but everything from there is rough and tumble. Hands under his t-shirt, wandering, but not aimlessly. Firm, sure, lingering where he likes, but always making progress. Bo helps matters by grabbing his own shirt hem and pulling it up. Has to wait for a pause in the kiss that started around the time his second shoulder hit the mattress, same time Luke's knee found its way between Bo's legs. A hitched moment to breathe and Bo's shirt's gone, up over his head, and dropped someplace that might or might not be the floor.

Kiss is back, Luke's on his elbows now, hands curling up and around the back of Bo's shoulders, pulling him down to where he is wanted. Which works out perfectly well, giving him the opportunity to slide his fingers under the waistband of Luke's shorts. Light, tickling movements, makes Luke kiss him harder, tooth and bone. Feels like a fight, and he's already decided those don't belong here in this night, so he changes his style, matching his grip to Luke's, firm, strong.

A rhythm sets into their hips, syncopated, off-beat. His hands try to show Luke the tempo, but, stubborn as ever, the man refuses to pick it up, leaving Bo to adjust his own pace. Frustrating, but he's already banned arguing, so he acquiesces instead, finds that Luke knows best after all. Slow, slow, but with a twist, like an exotic dance, until he's shoving Luke's shorts right down his legs, then going after the waist of his own sweatpants.

There's a hand there then, wrapping around him, hot, stroking. Maddening, dizzying, not enough air in those quick little puffs coming in through his nose, so he turns out of the kiss. Luke's at his ear then, breath, tongue, tickle.

He's all but paralyzed, hands up and grabbing at Luke's back, he does the only thing he can: offers himself.


	44. Fighting for Position

Fighting for Position

_Not_, comes that voice in the back of his head, the same one that keeps him from screaming like a drill instructor at the boys on his team whenever they display their lazy sides, the same one that always stays his fist the minute his opponent signals surrender, _like this_. Not when Bo's offering it up the same as those innocent little shoulder squeezes and back pats he's doled out all his life. Consolation: you ain't got the girl, you lost the race, you done made a fool of yourself, but you've still got me. Not when it's some misguided attempt to kiss the boo-boo of quitting his job and make it all better that he's never going to get to see Conklin outgrow that gangly teenaged look to become the man he so craves to be. Not on the same day he's recognized that Marks' cocky ways are nothing but an imitation of his own, not when it's meant to make up for the way that Smitty won't hardly look at him anymore. Not when it's motivated by pity, disguised as a bet, one that Luke only made because he's perfectly aware that the man underneath him needs sleep even more than he does.

Bo's brain can be forgiven its lack of clarity on the subject, considering the location of Luke's right hand and what it's doing. He knows exactly what that feels like, how it takes everything that could be considered a thought and swirls it around until it's nothing more than vapor, then blows it right out the window in deference to need.

It's harder than it ought to be, turning the two of them over. Easier to push Bo to where he wants than to try to pull, but he's got an ace up his sleeve in the way his right hand moves, so Bo comes, even if he's not happy about it.

"Luke," he complains, oh, but he's breathless, can't say all of what he must want to. About how this isn't what he had in mind, how Luke's the one that's supposed to be on top.

_Not_, comes to him as a reminder of all those times his Aunt Lavinia warned him that he didn't know his own strength, that he needed to be gentler when playing with his younger cousins, _on a day when holding back might just be impossible_. Not when he knows, better than Bo does, that there's pain before the pleasure; this, what they are about to do, is no way for him to expel the demons of the day.

His cousin wants to fight him for position, it's there in the tight stance he's got over Luke's body, muscles at the ready for the first opportunity to roll them back to where they were. But Luke's got the upper hand, or maybe just a hand in the right place, and then there's the fact that he knows where the oil is.

He has to work a little, left hand on the back of Bo's neck and pulling until their lips meet, even if it means he hoists himself up off the bed a little with the effort. No matter, Bo can only hold his weight for so long, and in seconds his back's against the mattress again, the heaviness Bo pressing him there. Still a struggle, all hard lines digging into him, knees and elbows, not to mention teeth, but he feels the moment Bo gives in. Lips soften, and there's a hand in his hair, not pulling, just playing there. A minute for them both to adjust to what this thing is going to be, then Bo's hips relearn the rhythm of what they were doing before, figure out how to adapt to being back on the top.

"You're sure?" gets panted in his ear when the kiss stops.

A nod is all the answer he's interested in giving.

"Then you'd best—Luke," pause there for the man to catch his breath. "Best stop that," what his hand has been up to all along. "Or I ain't gonna be able to."

Nods again, lets Bo get up to his knees and grab onto that hand that's been doing the stroking. Lets his wrists get pinned under Bo's long fingers again – seems to work for the man. Feels the softness of lips there at his collarbone, lets his head tip to the side, giving that tongue half a clue about where it's wanted. Soft skin on the side of his neck, but Bo doesn't linger there. Movement, maybe intending to keep Luke guessing but failing because his hair's dangling down, tickling along as he goes, telegraphing the next resting spot. Lips, tongue, and Bo's hands there, keeping him from resisting the search for sensitive skin. Somewhere south of the beast bone, Luke starts arching up against him. The man needs to either keep moving down or quit right there and get back to what they were working toward. He fights up against the weight on him, muscling one hand free to catch Bo's chin. Sweat there, slick, Bo's been putting some serious effort into driving him crazy. A tug and they're face to face again, heavy breaths and kissing.

"Just a sec," is Luke's request, as he starts fishing around blindly for the night table on his side of the bed. Dang it, if he can't even locate the furniture, he's got no chance of digging up the little bottle of oil that he pulled out of their camping gear and stashed in the drawer there.

Bo chooses not to be helpful, taking advantage of the stretch of Luke's body to go right back to kissing awfully close to his most sensitive parts.

"Bo," he warns, or that's what it's meant to be. If there's just the shade of laughter caught up in there, that's not his fault.

And the "Mmm?" of response just goes to show that smugness himself knows exactly what he's doing.

"Quit that," only leads to a tongue tracing a line down from his breastbone, past his bellybutton. Wet stripe like a trickling bead of sweat, and in a minute Luke's not going to be responsible for what he does. Except that someone has to be responsible, and it's sure not going to be Bo. So he gives up the search for oil and grabs himself a handful of blonde hair. Pulls, not hard enough to hurt, but to make his wishes known: _up here, you idiot._ Funny how Bo comes along easily enough, but there was never a doubt that he would – preservation of his hair has always been one of the man's top priorities. "Stay," he commands, or does his best to with all the hyperventilating that's going on between them. "Right here."

There might be a nod, and he's sure there's the grin of the devil there on Bo's face, cloaked by the dark of night. Nothing to be trusted whatsoever, so he gives that blonde fuzz in his grip one more tug, until their faces are even, sweat from Bo's forehead dripping right down to land dangerously close to Luke's eyes. "Right here," he repeats before the kissing begins again. Swollen lower lip gets pulled into Luke's mouth, gently held hostage by his teeth, before his hand releases Bo's hair to go in search of what he was so rudely interrupted from finding.

Bo takes his life in his hands (or maybe it's Luke's life in one hand) by reaching down to stroke him. Then again, he's got to know, after all these years, that there's almost nothing he could do that would make Luke hurt him. (And that one thing he could do that would cause them both more pain than they've ever felt, well, he's not going to think about that, hopes Bo isn't either.) But he sure as hell is making this a lot harder than it needs to be.

He grew up with this very man, winning wrestling match after wrestling match – except the ones he didn't win, but that's only because he didn't want to permanently damage the fragile ego of his kid cousin – and he can win this, too. Mind over matter, even if the matter would like to take his mind right out of contention, until his fingertips find the cold metal of a drawer pull.

"Very good," Bo murmurs, when his lips come away from Luke's, and his hand lets up from the control it's had over him. Good thing, too – with his longer reach and superior position, Bo can grab the oil easily, instead of prolonging the torture of Luke's blindly groping hand. Opens the cap and pours a few drops into Luke's waiting palm.

"More," he commands. There's not enough slick feel to coat his own index finger (needs to remember that later) much less the intended destination for the oil.

"Really?" Bo asks, and it's a good thing it's dark. An even better thing that Bo's been working so hard at putting him into a good mood. Because in the light of a less pleasant day, that smirk that's got to be on Bo's face, topped by that cocked eyebrow, would have to contend with Luke's fist. Or at least his cold shoulder.

"Only if you want to—" and Bo's pouring before the sentence even finishes itself. Too much, a little spills over onto Luke's belly, cool droplets. Revenge is Luke's when he doesn't give the liquid any time to warm in his hand.

But war ends right there; when the oil is spread and the pillows are shuffled, when the kissing's done and their bodies are properly positioned, Bo manages to be exceedingly gentle.

And afterward, if Luke technically wins the bet when his cousin starts snoring there on his chest, it doesn't matter. His own slumber is not far behind.


	45. Playing with Dynamite

Playing with Dynamite

"Well, there was the time he jumped the General over a truck in the middle of Loganville Road, just because it was there." Sounds less than fascinating, even to him. The passage of twenty years, and maybe it was one of those things you just had to be there for.

"Duke jumped a car?" is the incredulous response from his little smokejumper-boy, Smitty. They've already gone over how he and Luke built the General from the ground up, which also turned out to be something of a revelation.

"At least once a week," Bo confirms. It's awkward, really, talking about Luke this way with one of his biggest admirers, even if it is supposed to be for a good cause. "He obviously ain't been telling you the best stories. He ever mention Rosco?"

The kid's warming up to him. It started out pretty awkward, a knock on Luke's door not more than ten minutes after the man himself had gone out, leaving Bo alone at home with nothing to do yet one more time.

A comparatively pleasant morning it had been, waking up with the warmth of Luke's shoulder still there under his cheek, and a chance to roll over and watch him sleep. Not for long, "Quit it," got grumbled out, followed by, "would you be still?" Which wasn't fair, he could hardly be expected to stay motionless all morning. Besides, his calf had itched, and it wasn't the kind of thing that could be ignored. He'd really only used his toenail to scratch at it; would've been worse if he'd had to get a hand down there.

Hard to glower with one eye, only halfway cracked open to begin with, but old grumpy managed. Closed it again; Luke's lips there underneath it fighting to stay flat and frustrated, but the corners came in, face hair accentuating the curve of that lower lip. Red, slightly chapped, looking a touch dry and in need of some refreshment, so Bo kissed it. Once, then twice, because it had been neglected for hours and obviously required a great deal of attention.

Two half circles of blue this time, looking around the angles of that crooked nose to focus on where Bo's chin was propped on Luke's chest. "Don't go starting nothing." As if Luke hadn't been kissing back, like his lips weren't pouting now for being left lonely.

"I ain't," Bo had assured him, then his finger crept up to play in that wiry beard. Noticing, all over again, how it made Luke look like exactly the devil he was, once upon a time.

"Dynamite arrows," he tells Smitty. "Funny thing about Luke, he can miss the broad side of a barn at six paces with a regular arrow, but you stick dynamite or a flare on there, something to knock that arrow off-balance? And suddenly he's Robin Hood." Or whoever it was supposed to be that could split an apple from something like a half-mile distance. And this was the flaw in their hunt, obviously. He forgot to pack dynamite so Luke could explode the poor little turkeys all over the southwest corner of Montana.

"Wait," Smitty's asking him. "Duke used to play with dynamite?" Split somewhere between excitement and disappointment, the kid seems to settle for incredulity.

"Not so much play," Bo corrects, but that's what it was. A big game of cowboys and Indians, neither winnable nor losable, because it could never end. Paused for a minute or two at probation, then started all over again in fast forward. Dizzying, wild days those were, sunshine warm, the most flawed bit of perfection anyone could ever hope to experience. NASCAR felt like that once, too, but that only lasted until his first big win without Luke by his side. From there the colors muted, noises dulled, and life became antiseptic. "It was work, in its own way, what we done with dynamite. And Luke was always careful, wouldn't never hurt no living thing." Scared a hell of a lot of them, though. Including Bo, that one time he held more explosives in his hand than either of them had ever bothered to mess with before, then lobbed it off a safe enough distance to protect them both. He'd never had a stronger desire to kill his cousin, nor a greater urge to keep him alive, than on that day. "And anything we blew up, we had to rebuild anyway." Eventually. They got pretty dang good at carpentry after a while.

Smitty's got no idea whether to trust him. Doesn't know the Duke reputation – sure, they'll turn your life upside down, charm your wife, and swipe the object of your admiration right out from under your nose, but they don't lie – clearly knows very little about Dukes at all.

"Luke ever talk to you boys about moonshine?"

This morning had been hair of the dog, kisses like tiny sips while Luke made a fine show of trying to sleep. Wasn't Bo's fault he was halfway drunk again by the time he gave up the game and admitted to being awake. Hand in his hair and the crazy blue of those eyes just staring into his, and it couldn't be helped when sips turned to gulps. And when Luke groused about how they really needed to quit messing around and get out of bed, he didn't have any option but to mention how cold Montana showers were, either. Which was why he couldn't exactly be blamed for how they wound up under the spray together, tight squeeze of elbows bumping walls, random at first, but building to a rhythm, and what happened after that wasn't anything he could be blamed for, either.

The one thing that was entirely his fault was that he didn't give in to the urge to grab onto Luke right after, hold onto him with the water flowing over them until their fingers pruned and their bodies shook with cold when the last drops of hot water ran out. Should have, would have been better to keep the man close and warm than to let him go off like he had. Clean, dressed, fed, and Bo was doing some high order mathematics on how quickly he could undo each of those things, leaving Luke dirty, hungry and naked all over again, when his cousin went and announced how he had to go.

"Gotta get out of my lease," was the explanation, followed by an invitation. "Realty office is just over in Anaconda. You can come if you want. Shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes."

No thanks, another boring errand in a long line of them, pretty close to nonstop since they'd gotten here. Oh, but he should have bitten the bullet, should have tolerated a few minutes of shuffling his feet on someone's ugly deep pile carpet while Luke went behind closed doors to disappoint yet another of the region's men. Now he's sitting here on the porch steps, wondering whether there are any marks on his neck from where Luke's lips finally found purchase in the middle of that part of their shower that left them dirtier then when they'd gotten in. And telling ten foot tales about his six foot cousin and their shared youth of illegal whiskey and probation, reckless driving, rope swinging, car jumping, fist fighting, bullet dodging, and law thwarting. None of these are secrets, or they sure as heck weren't in Hazzard, but this conversation feels like betrayal all the same.

So he quits, leaving Smitty to gape wide-eyed at Luke depraved youth – even if the kid's mouth is closed, the image in Bo's mind it of a landed fish sitting there on Luke's porch next to him. The silence of drowning on air blankets them for a minute or two, before the kid says, "But what does Duke want?"

That might just be the funniest question Bo's ever been asked – as if Luke would ever do something so simple as wanting something. To Luke, everything is some kind of a complex negotiation through sucking quicksand populated by rattlesnakes in a lightning storm. Want gets twisted up with loss and consequence, leaving Luke to work his way through solving the kind of equation that Bo never bothered with back in the days of school and algebra. He just went ahead and failed the class, took his lumps from Jesse, but it was worth the fun he got to have while Luke toiled his way through school, solved every damn problem put in front of him, even if the answers he came up with didn't exactly please his teachers.

"Kid," he says, and if it sounds smug or condescending, if it reminds him of Jesse's old-man lectures from years ago, that's not his fault. He's got a twice as many years as the boy in front of him has even been on this earth (and that's another thing Jesse would have said) of experience trying to figure out the answer to that very question. "Luke," he tries to answer, gets interrupted by the crunch of gravel and hum of a Jeep's engine. His cousin always has had impeccable timing when it comes to saving his neck. "Ain't never easy to figure out." He stands and brushes off his jeans, waiting for his cousin's suspicious blue eyes to emerge from the vehicle. "He don't much care for chocolate, though," he adds.


	46. Nothing Special

Nothing Special

Gleaming red beacon as he comes around the ridge on Willow Creek Road, and if he'd been asked to guess – before he'd seen it with his own eyes – which two people he'd find sitting on his porch, he might never have come up with Bo and Smitty. Each of them finding their feet as Luke pulls into the driveway slightly crooked to leave room for Smitty's pickup to get back out.

At least, he notices as he squints against the sun's glare, there's no blood. A fist fight between those two would be ugly. Bo could most likely still take the kid, but it wouldn't be easy; Smitty's a hell of a lot stronger than his slender physique would indicate. What he lacks, in fighting both men and fires, is experience, and he's totally devoid of cunning. Oh, sure, Bo would probably never have come up with that little double-fisted-elbow-to-the-gut move he likes so well on his own, but since Luke taught it to him, his cousin's become as dirty a fighter as anyone else. It was survival in a moonshiner's world to corrupt Bo that way, teaching him to win dirty if he couldn't win clean. A sneaky little move was a small price to pay to keep him out of prison.

And while a blaze is just about the only thing less trustworthy than a revenuer, its moves even slicker than the best of the best of law enforcement, it bears no ill will. If it takes lives, it also leaves the soil replenished and ready for new growth. There is no way to fight against a fire other than to be exactly the kind of earnest and strong that Smitty is. Luke has never had to save his neck by teaching him to be underhanded.

Funny to feel awkward climbing out of his Jeep just to stand in his own driveway. Long line of Bo's shadow bounces and jags up the steps behind him, with Smitty's shorter one next to it, desperately trying to keep up. Seems that Bo's been forgiven for whipping out his Duke charm against Michelle last night; then again, maybe the problem never had anything to do with the flirt in front of him. Seems like, and he's known this all along, what's under his former charge's skin has got everything to do with Luke.

"Duke," Smitty greets him. "I came to see you. Your cousin there was kind enough to keep me company until you got home."

He nods because he heard the words, even if he doesn't quite believe them. Company gets brought inside and offered tea or coffee, even if they're the law come snooping around after evidence of a crime. Guests get their little hearts blessed, even on days when they're about as welcome as a bout of influenza, then sent back home with enough pie to feed their families, friends and neighbors. They don't sit out on the front porch, door closed against their entry, unless they're peddlers or tax collectors. What Bo and Smitty have been up to Luke hasn't got the first idea, but it's got nothing to do with company.

"Come on in, then," he invites, his eyes flicking over to Bo to chastise him for not doing it sooner. Little shrug there, his cousin's silent acknowledgement of wrongdoing, with no intention of fixing it.

"I'd rather we walked," Smitty says, nodding up at the ridge that looms to the north of the cabin. Which just goes to show that it takes a southern guest to understand southern hospitality. Smit is from western stock, born and bred in these mountains, so different from the ones he and Bo were raised in. And Montana men, so far as Luke's been able to figure out, would just as soon spend their days under the breadth of open sky.

"All right," he agrees. "We won't be long," gets directed at Bo.

"Take your time," his cousin offers with a wry little smile like a private admission between the two of them that Luke's still got some books to close before he can walk away from here, and they haven't even had time to talk about the lease yet. Makes him want to kiss the man, make a promise of a better future. Not so much a goodbye kiss as an _I'll-see-you-soon_ kind, like Jesse used to give Lavinia before heading up to the stills. Home by morning with a _see-I-told-you-I'd-be-back_ kiss.

Doesn't matter what he wants, he can't do it, and not only because Bo's already closing the door behind him with a solid click. He also loses the opportunity to suggest his cousin build a fire to the speediness of that closed door. Maybe Smitty and Bo were closer to blows than he wants to know.

He leads this expedition up over the crest of the ridge, because if it's his nose that the kid has come to bloody, he figures that needs to happen outside the viewing range from his living room windows, where protective Duke bonds dictate that Bo will keep an eye on them through. Small patch of no man's land between here and there, and he picks himself a boulder to sit on. Smit, who has kept pace, finds his own seat, and joins Luke in staring out at the view. Dank up here, clouds to the west, and it's always hard to know this time of year whether the front that's coming will burst out into rain or snow. But whatever it's going to make its mind up to be is still half a day away, at least. Nothing to worry about.

"What can I do for you?" Someone's got to break the silence.

"Duke," the kid starts, still staring down at that line of green that marks Willow Creek. "Is there something you ain't telling us?" Well, only a lot of things. "I mean, about why you're suddenly leaving. You said it was family, but that don't make sense. I mean, you had family back east all along. You ain't sick, are you?"

It's almost relief to hear that question. Almost, but not quite, because there's a follow up.

"I mean, I figured when you said your cousin was in town, maybe it was him that was sick or something, like you had to go take care of him. But he seems real healthy and all. I just figure, you never much talked about him before. Why is he suddenly so important?"

It's like they're in the air, looking down on windswept clouds that echo the improbable jags of land formations below. Shades of orange and pink that don't get seen from below, and those are the colors Luke's come to associate with honesty. He's got rules on his team about telling the truth. Not exactly Jesse Duke-approved honesty, closer to a more generic moonshiner's code. Lie to the revenuer, but never each other, and Luke always swears he doesn't care what kind of wild tale the kids want to tell the girls they try to pick up in bars, so long as they're straight with their fellow team members. And the best time to get genuine answers from his boys is when they're looking down at clouds and thinking about the ground that they can't see below them, waiting with all its solidity for them to come crashing down into it.

Luke reckons that, even if he's not on the team anymore, he owes the boy a certain amount of truth.

"I ain't sick," is an easy one. "And neither is Bo. Nor Daisy, neither, but if they was I'd go home to them."

A boulder was a poor choice of resting places, should have chosen the ground where he might have found a pebble or loose stick to fiddle with. All he's got up here is moss that clings so tightly to its home that he doesn't have the heart to disturb it.

"Bo," he starts, but there's a fine line he's got to walk here. The truth, but nothing personal, not without his cousin's consent. "He's always been just about the most important thing to me. I mean, it ain't like I never talked about him. You knew we was raised together, and you knew he was a race car driver. We just – life took us separate ways, I guess. He went off to NASCAR and I came here." Which is plenty truth enough – it served for Anita, back in the earliest days of their relationship when she was all curiosity about his origins, and how a nice southern boy like him came to live in an ice covered corner of the country that the sun never could bring itself to warm thoroughly.

"If he was so important, how come you didn't go to NASCAR with him?" Except Anita wasn't Smitty. She wanted to love him, wanted to accept any answer he ever gave at face value. This kid right here might be trying to work himself up to hating Luke. "He says you were as good a driver as he was."

"He's just being nice," is Luke's answer, but even that's not quite right. Bo has – their whole lives have been one long competition that Bo can't quite tolerate winning. Seems like being the best would give him responsibilities, and if there's one damned thing his cousin's never wanted, it's to be responsible. Or maybe that's not entirely fair. There are other reasons Luke can think of for Bo saying that. "Ain't no one I've ever met can drive like Bo. Besides, we went to NASCAR together once. Made us both so homesick we up and quit. I never wanted to go back; he did. Smit," he says, because there's no explanation he can give that makes any sense. Even if the kid knew what the Duke boys do behind locked doors these days, it wouldn't enlighten him a bit about how they could be the most important people in each other's lives and still spend fifteen years apart. That part doesn't even make sense to him, and he had as much to do with it as Bo. "I ain't always made good decisions. But this one's right. It's time for me to go home now, and time for you guys to get the benefit of someone else's wisdom. I ain't the only team leader out there."

"I know that. Hell, we all know that." The words are reasonable, the tone is patient, but the kid's right foot is there tapping into the ground, stamping bits of anger into the dirt in some thin hope that it won't come seething out of his mouth. "We got Morton and Hendricks right there as examples. There's others and that ain't news, and it ain't a good reason for you to go off and leave us. If you want to go home, I suppose that's what's best for you. But you can't go telling me it's what's best for the team." So much for the boy's foot having any control over his mouth.

Luke rubs his hands up and down his own thighs. Frustrated little gesture, because there's no getting around what he has to say. "Smit, I ain't your team leader no more. When I was, I needed y'all to trust me completely, so if I told you to do something, you'd just do it without thinking twice. It was part of keeping each of you safe. But I ain't," pause there, he has to stop for a second to find his next words. "I ain't half as smart as I pretend to be. I don't always make good decisions, and half the time I don't even know what I'm doing. Jumping – well it's got its dangers, but it's also got easy rules to follow. Stay back from the fire line. Look for a safe place to retreat to if the fire's gonna jump the line you're cutting. Attack where it's weak, and stay away from where it's strong. It's like a manual you carry around in your head." Sure there are more variables than what he's listed, but knowing how to handle those just comes with experience. All of his kids have picked up a heck of a lot more than they realize. They've simply become too comfortable relying on Luke to look after them to recognize the skills they've got. "I ain't nothing special," he concludes.

"If that's what you want to believe, I don't suppose there's anything I can do about it," is Smitty's analysis of it all. "If that's what makes it easier for you to leave—"

"Smit," he interrupts, that same commanding tone he uses when he needs a quick reaction from one of his boys. On his feet suddenly, pacing through his words. "I ain't telling you this to make it easier on me. I'm giving you the truth here. I ain't no one you need to look up to no more. I ain't no smarter than the next guy, I ain't always made smart choices and I ain't done nothing but made a mess of my whole life. So if you want someone to be a good role model, look at Martinez. He done worked his way all the way up to regional supervisor, and he's got a wife and kids. I ain't half of what he is."

Smitty's just nods at him. "If that's the way you want it."

No, that's not what he wants, not exactly. He wants to be the man Smitty's always imagined him to be. But he's not, and now that he's not a team leader, he needs to stop pretending to be something he isn't.

So, "It is," he assures the kid. Watches Smitty stand, and walks parallel to him back down the ridge. Silence, right up until the boy's halfway in his truck. That's when those blue eyes come up to meet his, heartbroken at his betrayal.

"See you around," he says, slams the door and starts his engine. Half a minute later he's pulling out into the street, then gone.

Well. It's been a banner day. And he hasn't even gotten the chance to talk to Bo about his lease yet.


	47. Small Potatoes

Small Potatoes

"You said you got the money." Luke had been quite stubborn about that part, actually, insisting that whatever he needed, it sure as hell wasn't Bo's money. "I still don't see why it's eating at you." Except that, as a general rule, everything eats at Luke.

"You can't figure why it's a problem for me to pay, for the next six months, for a place I ain't gonna live in? When the realtor could rent it out to someone else, but they ain't even gonna try?"

They've been over this a few times by now. It's never been resolved, exactly, but each time they go through it to the same conclusion they came to last time, Bo keeps hoping it can be dropped. Apparently not, because here they are making dinner, having the exact same conversation as they did at lunch.

"It ain't no different from when Boss Hogg would suddenly change the terms of the mortgage," Luke grouses, and that, at least, is a variation on the same old theme. Except it doesn't exactly change what the outcome is going to be.

"You figure if we had the General and a few sticks of dynamite, we could fix it?" It's meant to be a joke, but Luke's not even close to laughing. "You signed the lease, cuz. You knew what was in it. You said yourself, this is the wrong season for them to find new renters. It ain't like Boss whose fine print was so tiny you needed a microscope to read it." Then again, Bo has seen how Luke squints at the maps he likes so much to read. Could be he wasn't able to read the fine print after all. Not that he's going to be the one to point out to his ornery older cousin the need for reading glasses. No, he likes his face a nice, healthy pink, doesn't favor the idea of making it over to be swollen and blue.

Charleen's beef stew is coming along nicely. Those carrots Luke's been taking his frustrations out on, cutting them down to the point where they might as well be orange-colored salt grains, are the last ingredient he needs before he can just slap the lid on and let it boil down on its own.

"You don't think it's wrong to go paying money on a place where you ain't living?" Luke argues, and Bo can't figure out exactly why. His cousin's usually the first one to shake his head in an admission of you-got-me, once it's been proven that he's not quite in the right after all.

"Is that the question?" He's not talking about right or wrong here, just trying to follow along Luke's train of thought. Which would be a hell of a lot easier if it would stop jumping the tracks.

A sigh, and Luke's bringing him the orange stained cutting board, littered with tiny chunks of carrot. The man is nothing if not meticulous. Then again, he's always been the same way about chopping wood, and if that roaring fire he's got going in the living room is a testament to his chopping skills, well he can cut vegetables for Bo any night of the week. Bo scrapes the knife across the board, creating an ear-splitting racket, but the carrots are in the pot, bouncing around to the same rhythm as the rest of the vegetables.

"Never mind," Luke says. Bo shrugs his agreement about dropping a topic that's already been dropped three previous times today, and reckons he'd better start preparing for yet another go-round in an hour or so. Which should match tidily with dinner time, and it's been a good thirty-plus years since they last got into a food fight. Without Jesse here to whip them afterward that kind of battle might be interesting, but he reckons he doesn't want to go scrubbing wads of beef, beans, peas and carrots off of Luke's walls afterward.

His cousin's back at his side, brandishing potatoes, hand out for the chopping board. But this here stew only has one cook, and they've both agreed that's Bo. "I wasn't gonna put them in," he informs his cousin.

Luke's pretty sure he's an idiot, or maybe reckons he's in the throes of temporary insanity. He's still standing there, sack of potatoes in one hand and the other one outstretched. The only difference between right now and five seconds ago is that skeptical, head-tipped look that would be almost cute, except for how it silently mocks him for being a fool.

"I was gonna panfry them later," he clarifies.

Another sigh, and Luke's hand drops away. Odd body language as he walks back toward the cabinet to put the potatoes away – looks almost like defeat.

"We can put them in if you really want to," Bo offers. "It ain't like we actually need a side dish with stew." Daisy would disagree, and so would half the girls he's dated, but honestly, there's already so many different things bubbling together in the pot in front of him that they don't need to add anything they don't want to.

"No, you just go on with what you was doing."

Hard to explain why he's suddenly so angry, what it is about Luke's behavior that has set to burning somewhere between his flesh and his bones so violently he needs to open his mouth and let it out. "Damn it Luke," he startles himself with the vehemence of the words, but his cousin's demeanor doesn't change. "You ain't got to go giving in all the time. You don't agree with me," because despite the way he's acquiescing over there, Luke's still Luke. If Bo thinks the sky is blue, brings in sixteen experts to swear that color is exactly in the middle of the blue range of the spectrum, holds up a blue crayon that blends so closely to the sky that it just about disappears, and gets a signed affidavit from the president of the US of A himself on the nature of blue skies, Luke is still going to insist that what's up there over their heads is green. "So quit pretending you do."

"Bo," tries to snap back at him, does the kind of job that would convince the entire population of the state of Montana, no doubt, but Bo knows better. "I ain't going to stand here and fight you over potatoes."

Or over anything, really. Seems like the kind of thing he's always pictured as a slice of paradise, for Luke to stop making everything they do so damn hard. Doesn't sound like a problem in the abstract, seems like complaining about it ought to get him laughed at more than anything. _Luke's too danged agreeable, Uncle Jesse, can you talk to him?_ He can just see the old man's head shaking, smile engulfed by his beard.

"All right," he agrees, because potatoes are stupid after all. "What about your job? You ain't got to quit because I—" lost my cool and demanded it of you. "I said so, and you ain't got to go—"

"Bo." It's that quiet, warning tone. _Don't push me_.

So he doesn't push, he shoves. "And then there's sex." Which might just be the first time that either of them has admitted out loud to what they do in the bed. Most of their sentences about that end with the word _to_ – do you want to? – without ever requiring (or wanting) clarification. "You ain't got to go rolling over on your back every time. I ain't some little boy that you got to go looking out for no more. I got plenty of—"

Luke's hand comes up to stay his words. "All right." Or in surrender, like Rosco's suddenly there in Luke's Montana cabin, waving a dangerous weapon around with no real understanding that it could go off.

"Dang it!" Because the man is talented beyond any kind of measurable scale at being irritating. Boss Hogg's gnat-sized efforts at annoying their younger selves had nothing on his cousin's eternally mulish nature. "Luke! Would you quit it? You ain't got to play nice or pretend like I can't keep up with you no more. Shoot, I been bigger than you since the tenth grade." And he hasn't had to run along behind, trying with every panting breath to keep up, not since the first time he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal of Sweet Tilly at the age of thirteen.

"I said all right."

Luke turns then, puts one foot in front of the other, some intention of walking out of here, but that's not going to happen. All these quiet warnings he giving off to get Bo's to leave him alone really ought to be heeded, but then again he reckons a bloody nose will heal in a day or so. This other thing has festered between him and Luke for years now, since that day he announced he was done waiting for his cousin to come back, threw his engagement to be engaged to Sarah-Beth in the man's face. It's oozed there in the space between them and, disguised as infinite patience on Luke's part, become infected and raw. Nothing that should be hidden under the bandages of civility his cousin would like to slap over it, it's got to be opened to the air, where maybe it has a chance of getting better. Some day.

"Don't," he says, stepping right up in front of the man, finger leveled at his chest to prevent any more progress toward the door or the Jeep or the bedroom or wherever his cousin wants to escape to this time. "Go walking away from someone who wants to love you, Luke."

"I ain't walking away, Bo." It's supposed to be a sneer, and it even makes it about a third of the way there before it sort of limps to a sad little conclusion. "I'm just going—"

"It don't matter where you're going. Don't you walk away from me. I'm dang sick of—Luke." It stops, quick as the snap of a finger, dizzying anger abandoning him like even it's disgusted with him and his behavior. The man in front of him – well, Luke's shoulders are too tightly roped by muscle to his neck and back to ever slump, but they've got a tired look to them all the same. Hanging low, like a kicked dog begging for forgiveness at the door, even though it doesn't have the vaguest notion of what it did to fall out of favor in the first place. "Luke," he says again.

In the past his touch would have been tentative, a pat on the shoulder that his cousin could slip out from under and pretend it never happened. When they were younger he would have figured that the graze of four fingers across the shirt on Luke's back would have said something, been an offer that his cousin could take him up on if he really needed to. But that was when they were just cousins, when the difference in their ages still meant something, when Luke was bigger than him, stronger. That was then.

This is now, him stepping forward, right into what has traditionally been dangerous territory, hands on Luke's shoulders, holding firm. This is what fifteen years apart has done for him, given him the means to recognize that Luke's not as different as he pretends to be, that even his tougher than tough cousin can hurt enough that he gets tired of the fight, wants to retreat to lick his wounds. This is how he chooses to handle Luke tonight, arms wrapping around him, holding tight against half-hearted attempts to escape, fighting to stay strong and be gentle, both.

Fragile moment here, like the first crackling ice of winter that shatters under the weight of a pebble. He doesn't move or make a sound, does nothing to remind his cousin of where he is or what he's doing. Not-crying. The same way he not-cried when a certain red-headed race-car driver broke his heart, like he not-cried after a fistfight that drove Bo to leaving the farm, exactly the way he not-cried at Jesse's death. Bo just stands where he is, one hip resting against the counter, supporting Luke's weight as well as his own.


	48. Dignity

Dignity

There's no way for him to get out of Bo's arms with even the tiniest shred of his dignity intact, so he stays where he is. Only for a minute or so, he figures, just a needs sixty seconds to rest here.

Eventually (must have been here more than a minute) he feels the steady graze of fingers sweeping, kneading against the skin at the back of his neck. Bo is trying to make him cry, same as Lavinia used to do when they were tiny little slips of boys that could still climb into her lap. _Let it go, Luke_, she'd whisper, pulling his head onto her shoulder, _you'll feel better_. Then there'd be that rub of warm palm right at the nape of his neck, the sweet smell of powder only partly masking the stronger odor of hard work clinging to her skin, the hum of her voice tripping over old mountain melodies the likes of which he'd never heard sung the same way by anyone else, and it wasn't fair. It was like hypnosis, making him do things he'd never think to do otherwise, and he'd cry. Just for his Aunt Lavinia, he'd cry and then he'd settle there against her chest, and if she wanted to, she could make him sleep.

There's no way to step away from Bo without feeling like that little boy again, who would rather keep his nose buried in the soft shoulder of an aging woman than to lift his face so she could see how red it had grown over the span it took to empty his eyes of tears. So he stays where he is; one more minute won't make a difference in anything at all.

Jesse's attempts to make him cry were always more direct. Large body looming over his, strap in hand. Red-faced, bitter words first, then the lashes. Tears would end the whole tirade sooner, as Bo kept proving to him, most times crying before the whipping even started. But the whole process only made him angry, made him want to give lectures of his own and then swing out with his own fists. Jesse couldn't make him cry, not like Lavinia. The only times he ever came close were when giving in to the fury of his childhood temper managed to get someone hurt, specifically Bo or Daisy. There'd be that moment when he was forced to stare right into the face of whatever injury his rash actions caused, and right then, the tears would come. But once the yelling started, the lecturing and wheedling, they'd dry right up and evaporate only to condensate right back down into anger all over again.

There's no way he can slide out of the grip Bo's got on him without having to look straight down the barrel of the hurt he's caused, so he stays where he is. A minute is only sixty ticks, but time is a dynamic thing, sticking then surging at its own will.

Lavinia's hypnotic trances, he has to admit now, served a strange little purpose. He might rather have gone off and retched up all the food in his little-boy belly than to cough up tears to the bewitching ways of his numinous aunt, but somewhere in the quiet moments that followed, he understood that he was forgiven, loved. It could be that if he could cry now, if it was anything like a choice, he'd jut go ahead and do it. Bo's shoulder is hard, bony, and his smell is simple sweat without any sort of sweet disguise, but Luke wouldn't mind that, not if he could cry. He can't, hasn't been able to since he was no more than nineteen, standing in a rice paddy, looking at the body of a Marine that had bled out. His own age, give or take, small, sandy haired guy. Price, Lance Corporal, Company D. Likeable, funny, girlfriend at home, mother who sent care packages as often as she could. The kind of guy that someone ought to cry over, and most everyone did, it seemed. Not in any overt way, but it seemed like everyone else that saw him there mustered at least a sniffle. Luke, well he couldn't find even a single tear at the bottom of his soul, because the only emotion he could produce was relief. Right in front of him lay a kid who would never go home, but it wasn't him. More than that, it wasn't Bo, or Jesse or Daisy lying there. His mother and father were still gone, along with a baby brother he hardly remembered seeing that one time through hospital glass. Aunt Lavinia would never come back, but when the time came, Luke would go home, and his family, oddly patched together as they were, would be there.

Punishment for the crime of worrying about himself when he should have been thinking of a man who'd lost his life, that's his tearless existence. Seems all right, most days. Could be he hasn't missed the ability to cry at all, except on the day they buried Jesse. Well, that and the whole first week after Bo went back to NASCAR without him, and then again after his cousin made clear he was done waiting for Luke, got himself a pretty little filly he was going to marry.

Now – well now he can't cry and wouldn't want to, even if he could. So he leaves his dignity right there on Bo's shoulder where it fell when he accepted those arms around him, steps back, feels like a little boy, confronts the look of worry on Bo's face.

"Cousin," Bo says, because he knows what comes next, can't help but recognize that Luke needs to get out of here for a little while. The hand on his neck tightens down, keeps him close.

"I ain't going far," he promises. Bo's other hand comes up to brush across his cheek, wiping away moisture that doesn't exist. Nibbling at his lip, and his cousin shouldn't ever look like this. It's not who Bo was born to be, a man worrying about anything at all. Free, that's his natural state, nothing more pressing than keeping his lead around one more lap of the track. Bo needs him to walk away right now every bit as much as Luke needs to go. "I'll be back for dinner."

Another tug on his neck, kiss exactly like the one he wanted to give Bo earlier, before heading up on the ridge with Smitty. The kind that seals his promise about returning.

"All right," Bo agrees. "If you do something for me."

What option does he have? Luke nods his agreement to the condition, whatever it's going to be.

"While you're out there, doing whatever it is you do, I want you to think of one thing, just one, that I can do to help. Just one thing." Another kiss. "And it can't be to leave you alone and let you work through this on your own. That's what I been doing, and it ain't working."

No choice but to nod again, pay the price for freedom – Bo's as well as his own.


	49. Electricity

Electricity

Nervous lightning dances on the horizon, searching for the right patch of ground on which to release itself. Clouds are midnight-black, surly looking things that are looking for a fight of their own. No trees to speak of, and Luke's cabin juts up from the hill, presenting itself for the striking.

At least that's how it feels, looking out these oversized windows in the kitchen. It's got to be the angle or something, because he's never been one to worry too hard over the weather.

Then again, the bare land out there doesn't look like it's got a means to absorb any part of the violence; if trees blow down in an Appalachian spring storm, at least the winds are weaker for the effort to fell them.

There were days, or maybe it was more like years, when Hazzard felt like the middle of nowhere. Swamp to the south, mountains to the west, and town owned almost exclusively by Boss Hogg. Mostly it didn't bother him – it smelled of ash-log fires, sounded like birdsong, and felt like home – except come race-day in some neighboring county, and he and Luke couldn't even go to watch, much less compete, without special dispensation from a man who tried with all his great, greedy girth to hate them. And Hazzard could be lonely, too. Just look at Rosco, reduced to carrying a stuffed dog because he can't tolerate the heartbreak of losing yet one more best friend.

But there's a different kind of desolation to this place that lacks enough grass to help catch the wind and slow it on its journey eastward.

"Looks like we could get some hail out of that one."

Luke's suddenly behind him in the oddly greenish cast of the morning light. He's pretty sure he doesn't actually jump, but his heartbeat doubles in speed and volume. The man needs to stop sneaking around, letting the echoing thunder hide his footsteps.

Hail. There are other risks to thunderstorms. "You get tornadoes here?"

"Not much, not this far west," his cousin says, coming closer. "You'd be at bigger risk in Hazzard."

Yeah, well, he'd take his chances there. Ditches, gullies, low places – their hometown has them, even if it doesn't always have basements or cellars. Here, there's nothing to do but wait for the storm to climb on up the ridge and get them.

_Just promise me_, Luke had said last night, as his price for admission back into the house where a warm dinner waited to be served, _that this is what you really want, that you ain't gonna have no regrets about this come a month from now, or a year_.

Which was cheating. It wasn't what he'd been asked for, and it wasn't anything Bo wouldn't have done already if he'd known Luke wanted him to. In fact, it seemed like those reassurances had been uttered before, and it wasn't his fault Luke couldn't remember them.

It tickled there on his tongue, the itching desire to announce that this wasn't what he meant, to insist Luke come up with something else, some real way Bo could help him, before bed. But he hadn't.

Because you didn't ask a drowning man what he needed to get back to shore, you just found a rope or a long stick to toss and pull him in to safety. And if that didn't work, you waded in until you could barely keep your mouth above the water line, and stretched out a hand, and if you still couldn't reach him, if you loved him and he was Luke, you swam out to where he was floundering, wrapped your arms around him, kicked against the water with all your might, and took the risk of drowning there right alongside him.

So he hadn't complained or demanded a better answer, he'd just made the promises he was asked for, then sent the man off to get cleaned up for dinner. And if he heaped extra food onto his cousin's plate, then kept one eye on him to make sure everything on it got eaten, well, he did it clandestinely enough that Luke didn't yell at him to quit gaping and worry about his own eating habits.

"Electricity's out," he informs his cousin as they both watch the lightning shimmy through the sky. Lost, even the storm seems lonely out there, reaching out tendrils to the ground in search of life.

He doesn't have to turn around; he hears Luke's wry smile form behind him as a quick little exhalation of air. "I noticed," and of course he did, going off into that mostly dark bathroom of his for a shower. Bo does turn then, has a need to see Luke's hair clinging to his head in darker-than-normal clumps, and the thought of being wet in this morning chill makes him shiver on his cousin's behalf.

"We could start a fire," Luke offers.

Last night's fire burned late and warm, sparks of yellow-blue tending toward purple and green crackling up into the chimney. Dark but for flames, and there were two Duke boys sitting close. Not touching most of the time, and never with more than fingers. Chaste enough that it could have been twenty or even thirty years ago, except back then Jesse and Daisy would have been there.

And they never would have talked when they were younger. Not that their tongues were unduly loosened last night either, but when they had something to say, it got said. Nothing that changed anything important, but it was something approaching a conversation, and Daisy would have been proud of them. Or maybe not, at least not if she'd heard the details.

And when the fire stopped throwing heat, and the coals barely glowed enough to make out Luke's form next to his, they went to bed. For once, neither of them settled on the edge of the mattress – they huddled close for warmth or company, and maybe it didn't matter which. Luke must have been tired, because when Bo took to rubbing his back, there were no complaints, no rough hands pushing him away. There was just quiet, and eventually there was sleep.

"We could," he agrees about the proposal to build another fire this morning. But there's a storm out there where Luke would have to go and split some more logs, flashes of deadly light, rain and hail soon to follow. "Or we could just go back to bed."

He expects to get scoffed at for that, to be reminded how they only bothered to get to their feet some fifteen or twenty minutes ago, how Luke's just managed to get himself clean and hasn't got the least interest in making himself dirty all over again. What he gets is a hand, reaching out toward where he's been standing, letting the loneliness of this place seep into him like the cold that has hardly left him alone since he arrived here over a week ago. Warm hand, he takes it, feels the rough-skinned flaws in it, calluses from hard work and scars from youthful stunts, but it's strong, knows how to lead.

And when they crawl back under the covers, that hand explores his face, his hair, his shoulders. Rubbing, stroking, caressing slowly southward, leisurely enough that Bo would figure it was nothing more than gentle revenge for the way he put Luke to sleep last night. Would make sense in its own way, one Duke cousin proving his skill to be at least the equal of the other's, except that's not what this is. Kissing starts somewhere around the point that those hands are wandering the curves of his chest, hills and valleys. Bo's only got one hand – the other's trapped under the weight of his body, and shuffling it free could break the spell of what Luke's barely aware of doing right now (making love with only fingertips) – but he lets those fingers tangle in the hair on the back of Luke's head, and that seems to be enough.

Somewhere along the time that Luke's rough hand wraps itself around the both of them, slow stroke with a gradually building tempo, the thunderstorm must pass directly overhead. Crashing around them, and there's lightning right here under the covers with Luke. Could be that the crescendo outside of the cabin matches exactly with the one inside, or that might just be an illusion. It doesn't matter – if hail plans to fall, and a twister wants to follow on that, if the windows feel like shattering and the house is in the mood to lift right off its foundation sending them both flying toward Oz, that's fine – Luke's right here with him.

And when the electricity there between them sparks, glows, settles and fades, even though the storm still rages outside, he's able to sleep again.


	50. Souvenir Ashes

Souvenir Ashes

"You want anything in particular?" That question comes from his homemaking cousin, which he spent the first forty-odd years of his life thinking of as Daisy, but it turns out to be Bo. On his way to get groceries, now that the sky has cleared, and he's bounced back from this morning's storm. Bo always has liked to pretend that the lightning doesn't bother him, probably even has himself mostly convinced. But Luke's seen it all his life, blonde hair practically standing on end as he watches every strike with his shoulders tensed. Somewhere between fear and fascination, maybe. Wouldn't surprise him in the least to learn that his cousin wishes he could ride those bolts that fly across the sky almost faster than sight. Since he was a kid, Bo's always wanted to move at that unbelievable speed, achieve that incredible altitude. Oddly, his means of choice for trying has always been a car.

Bounced back from last night's melancholy, egg-shell stepping mood too, and Luke's made something of a silent vow to make sure Bo never looks or sounds like that again. Worrying after the way he didn't argue, didn't cry, didn't eat enough. Oh, he's seen that look of concern in Bo's eyes before, when he took roundhouse to the jaw and didn't come back up fast enough, when he was outnumbered or outsmarted. But he has to remind himself that being close to Bo magnifies things, blows them up so big that taming them back down takes one hell of a lot of effort, a high speed car chase, a well-executed plan, and he might just have to perform a flying tackle of one kind or another to get control again. Used to be he blamed it on Hazzard, reckoned it had something to do with Boss and Rosco, but bringing his cousin out here has proved it definitively: everything is just plain bigger with Bo.

And if the man wants to argue over potatoes, well, Luke's just going to have to find it in himself to care that much about little, brown, tuberous foods so that he can have something objectionable to say about them.

As to the rest of it – maybe, just maybe, Bo's got a point. A small one, but it's a point.

"Nope." It's grocery shopping; he never knows what he wants until he gets there. "You really like cooking all that much?"

Bo catches his eye in the mirror, which he's using to perfect his hair because it would be a tragedy to go wandering off down aisles of canned meat-product without properly fluffed curls. "Didn't you never get to missing home cooking, Luke?"

"Sure, I missed it," he admits. "But not enough to go trying to do it myself. Besides, what with jumping and all, I never know when I'll be home, so I don't keep much in the fridge. That's why me and the boys go to the diner so much."

Bo shrugs. "Well, I just figured them girls I dated wanted to feel like they taught me something. And since it wasn't going to be anything about love, it might as well be about food."

"Just generous to a fault, ain't you." First swiping the girls' hearts, then their heirloom recipes. If it were the time of their grandparents, he probably would have made off with their dowries as well, before slipping away in the night to find a new young lady to repeat all his same offenses on. "You sure you don't want me to come along?" Because even if, for some bizarre reason, a man could grow to like cooking, shopping is just as boring as it ever was back when Daisy used to slap them for trying to get out of doing their fair share.

"Nope," Bo answers ridiculously cheerfully. "I'm gonna take my time, and I don't want you rushing me along." Damn, Luke's going to have to take him out hunting again, get his hands dirty, remind him about burping and farting around the campfire, because Bo's rivaling Daisy for the most feminine Duke.

"Have fun," Luke offers, happy enough to be left behind anyway. He's in need of a second shower, and now that the power's back, he wouldn't mind making himself a cup of coffee to follow. "Wait," he calls, because Bo's already turned around and heading out of the bedroom. Two steps forward with his hand out and Bo comes. Goodbye kiss, because it seems like he learned something yesterday about such things as promises of better days ahead. Something he's going to have to teach Bo. Who seems like a fast enough learner.

"Okay," Bo agrees to what hasn't been said, just one beat after the kiss ends. "See you."

And once the engine noise of a Jeep backing down a driveway dies, Luke decides that both shower and coffee can wait while he goes out to split a few more logs. Because even if the storm seems to have brought a warm front, it's time for another fire.

Between pops, as last night's dry logs had settled down toward ash, sharing the width of the couch with Bo's knuckles grazing the seam of his jeans, Luke had tested him.

"It's a lifetime of secrets, Bo. Ain't no one can know but you and me."

"And Daisy," he'd been corrected, had to admit Bo was right on that one.

"Maybe Cooter too, but it ain't like—we can get away with living together because we's cousins, but we can't go doing nothing in public. Probably not even sitting this close." Funny thing, really, in the last 20 years or so it had become somewhat more possible for two men to be together in something of a public way, but it had gotten all the more awkward for first cousins to go crawling into the same bed. Seemed like him and Bo were rule-breakers no matter what decade or century they found themselves in. "Probably be best if we saw girls from time to time, too."

There was a grip on his arm then, tight like it planned to hold him there, just exactly the kind of gesture that always made him want to shake free. His teeth got gritted down hard against the desire; one time a night was about all the walking away Bo Duke could tolerate.

"No, we ain't seeing no girls." The grasp got tighter, then turned on him, something of a rub, like maybe he needed to be soothed. Meanwhile Bo's eyebrows hung low over his eyes, wrinkles between them magnified in the firelight. "It ain't fair to go seeing girls when every time they're just going to think maybe you love them. Gabby, she wanted four kids – and she figured how they ought to be mine. It ain't like it used to be." Or like Bo remembered it, more like, when he fell in love with a new girl at least once a month and promptly forgot the previous love of his life. He never saw their mooning eyes, watching him from across Hazzard Square while he leaned there in the shadow of the gazebo, a new (usually younger) girl hanging herself around his neck like a trophy buck on the hood of a car. Often enough Luke wound up with the leftovers then, the girls with broken hearts that figured one Duke boy might be the key to the other. He'd have to explain how he had no particular insight when it came to retaining Bo's attention, and then they'd get sent off to find someone other than a Duke to take them out next Saturday night.

"You really think it'll escape notice, just the two of us living together, going out together, never getting involved with no girls?" Because last time he checked, Hazzard was a tiny town with no industry of its own – except the rumor mill.

Those fingers come off him, and even with the fire not five feet away from where they're slouching across his couch in the kind of position that would have had Lavinia swatting their heads and telling them to sit up straight, he feels the chill of Bo's absence.

"Anita, she might have left you, but her heart got broke plenty. You wasn't watching how she couldn't see nothing but you." He doesn't want to hear this, not said in Bo's voice anyway, with the way it cracks like it's changing again. "I mean, we was a scruffy bunch, dirty from fighting and camping, and the General was there in full uniform, but she didn't even see him. It was like—" she'd seen a ghost. Yeah, he did know that.

"You got any ideas how we're going to manage not to attract too much notice?" Or answer the questions, when they came. About what ever happened to the roving Duke boys of old, and how come you ain't never settled down?

"You'll think of something," was his lazy kid-cousin all over again, but that was all right. Better than the quiet, worried man of a couple hours earlier.

The sun just might break through those clouds by afternoon, and if it manages, it'll be a genuine spring day, worthy or the southeast Bo's used to. By then all this chopping he's doing will seem like a fool's activity, but his neighbors are distant enough that they probably won't even notice the smoke that'll soon be coming out of his chimney. Besides, he hasn't got any plans on letting it burn all day. In fact, he might as well stop splitting right now and get the dang logs inside so he can get on with getting it burning, and after that, his coffee.

And it's not all that long before there's a decent fire crackling in his living room. Not half as pretty in the daylight as it was last night, but perfectly practical and suited to his purposes.

Late, and he had been fighting for his consciousness against the dark and warmth, not to mention the way Bo's arm was draped over his shoulders, fingers tangling in the soft hairs at the base of his neck. "It ain't just a matter of keeping it quiet, you know," he felt compelled to point out. "There's church."

Bo had laughed a little then, cocked his head like he always had when he reckoned Luke had maybe had a little too much to drink, though neither of them had touched even a drop in days.

"You go to church, Luke?"

"Of course I do." Just because Bo hadn't ever seen him on the inside of a church since the day he left Hazzard, aside from funerals, didn't mean Luke didn't go. "Just not every week or nothing. But if we was in Hazzard, we'd have to go."

"We'd have to go like we always did, and I'd fidget and you'd go jabbing me in the ribs. Aside from getting that bruise again that I always had on Monday mornings, I don't see what the problem is."

Of course he didn't, because the sun always shone on Bo Duke, and there was nothing like judgment day in his future.

"Jesse," Luke had pointed out, and he hardly figured he needed to say anything more. They both grew up with the man. "When I go to church, I always see Jesse in my head. That old black suit," that hadn't fit him in the later years of his life, but that didn't matter. It was for church and for court, and for awhile there it got used pretty equally for both. "That hat. I see Jesse, and Jesse wouldn't want to see us—"

"Let he who is without sin—"

Because to Bo it was just that simple. Jesse quoted that at them anytime they got too sure of themselves, anytime they got too righteous.

"Cast the first stone, I know. But that didn't mean us, Bo. We was supposed to behave ourselves, do right, and just not judge others. Shoot, what did you think all them whippings was about, anyways?" Not that Bo got half as many as he should have.

"Pride, temper, hell, I don't know, Luke. They was about keeping us alive, mostly, making sure we didn't get so out of line that we got ourselves killed. They wasn't," Bo's head shook here, that familiar look that was close to pity, something about how sad it was that Luke always thought the worst of everyone. "They wasn't supposed to make you feel bad about love, Luke." It wasn't the smartest thing Bo had ever said, didn't even halfway make sense. "He might not exactly have wanted us to end up with each other, but he wouldn't want us alone, either. I figure that if he had the choice between the two, he would want us together."

Well, Bo might have been wrong (Bo was definitely wrong) but there would be no convincing him of that. He was content to believe they had Jesse's warped and twisted blessing, and it would be cruelty to try to argue him out of that notion. So Luke settled then, felt the brush of Bo's fingertips on the nape of his neck, and if they tickled a bit more than he would have liked, they were also warm and soft. He reckoned he could tolerate them.

Coffee ceases to matter, now that the fire's going. Other, more important things come first. Like digging into that storage closet, under the blankets. A stack there of heavy paper. Nothing that ought to be able to cause any pain other than opening up a tiny cut that might sting for a moment or two, but they've been up under Bo's skin like an infection anyway, eating away at him since the day Luke told him where to find them. There's no way to fix that exactly, he's just going to have to minister to the injury he caused until it heals over, tend it carefully so it leaves only the tiniest scar. And maybe that starts with this: he feeds photo after photo of himself and Anita, two people pretending to be one, into the hungry flames.

Coffee never happens, a shower gets forgotten. By the time Bo makes it home, Luke's in the middle of the floor, surrounded by boxes. Some are full, others empty, and the fire's eaten well today. Luke is already halfway packed to get out of here.


	51. If Luke's an Idiot, I'm a Jackass

If Luke's an Idiot, I'm a Jackass

It's an office. No different, really, from that old redbrick Hazzard County Building, which he always considered public property. Shoot, he and Luke must have entered that place every way possible – through the door, a window, the trap door in the roof, handcuffed together, charging in with fists flying. Asserting, half the time, their right to be there when they were most definitely not invited. It would never have occurred to him to go knocking on the door to any public building, but this Forest Service Branch Office makes him think twice. He's not sure that any Duke is welcome on the inside of those glass doors.

Nevertheless, Bo Duke is not used to asking for permission, so he just swings the door wide and steps in. And if the handle leaves a little ding in the wall, well it's not the first time he can be accused of forgetting his own strength.

It's a maze of walls, reminding Bo of one of those old frame houses in Appalachia where rooms were haphazardly subdivided as new generations of children got born. This office is just like the roads to get here, illogical in their turns, and for the second time in ten minutes he's lost.

"Hey," calls a seemingly friendly voice as he's wandering what appears to be the main hall, looking into doorways. "It's Duke's brother."

"Cousin," he corrects the stocky young man that has stepped out of one of the rooms. Familiar, but no one he could put a name to. Not one of Luke's, he doesn't think. "I was looking for Smitty."

"He's in here," comes a voice from behind him, and he turns to see Marks standing there, pointing down a side hall. Too many twists to this place, and Bo barely made it past the front door last time he was here. So he lets Marks lead him, and figures he might just have to hire himself a guide to get back out.

"What can I do for you?" Smitty asks, looking up from some kind of equipment he's been tinkering with on the desk in front of him. Probably sophisticated weather-predicting machinery, and it's scattered there in tiny pieces.

"I was thinking we could go outside." Away from Marks and whoever else might wander in.

The kid shrugs, opens a drawer in the desk and shoves all those miniature screws, bolts, gears and other unknown gadgets inside. Complete mess in there, and Bo reckons it might be a good thing that Luke didn't see that happen. Seems a reasonable assumption that whatever Smitty's taken apart there will never work properly again.

He follows the kid out of the office, and even though it's warmer today than it has been since he got here, he points Smitty off to Luke's Jeep instead of standing out here in the open air. Nice, private place to talk.

"You asked me what Luke wants," he starts once they're inside, because he doesn't have time for small talk and wouldn't have the first idea what to say to this kid anyway. "Well, I figured it out."

"Duke don't want nothing from me," interrupts him before he can finish. Smitty's focused out the window on the still temperamental skies, presenting as many fast-moving, gray clouds as it does sun.

Bo takes a deep breath, lets it out. "What did he say to you?" Because he knows that look to the young jumper's posture. Tough, cool, not in the least hurt. Except for his heart, maybe.

There's a shrug over there on the passenger side of the car, and Bo can see, suddenly, why this one is Luke's favorite. Most any other twenty-something-year-old would be walking away or strongly suggesting he mind his own business. This one's going to stick it out, just like a young Bo always hung in there at Luke's side, no matter what his older cousin's foolish pride and sarcastic superiority led him to say.

"I guess he as much as told me to leave him alone. Not in so many words, but it's what he meant."

Yeah, well, parting ways with Luke Duke was never easy. Mostly it consisted of getting shoved – hard – toward the door.

"He said," Smitty continues, "something about how he wasn't perfect, and if I was looking for someone to look up to, there were better people. Which isn't even really fair. It's not like I look up to him so much as I thought we were friends. But I guess he was just my boss. And if that's true, well then he's got a point. There's Martinez and Morton and we'll get a new chief next week or the one after, I guess." Such a brave front, so familiar. Bo remembers putting up a few himself, like when Luke shook him off with some carefully placed and patronizing words, right before leaving for the military.

"What's your real name?" Bo asks him, because nicknames are for little kids, and eventually a boy's got to grow up and face some truths.

"Doug Smith."

"Well, Doug, Luke's an idiot," Bo informs the boy. Gets a funny look for it, and figures that Luke's probably at least half right about how this kid admires him. Seems like there's some consideration there on Smitty's part of defending Luke with words or maybe even fists, but Bo puts his hands up in surrender before it can even start. "He always has been, at least about some things. I reckon he told you you'd be better off without him?"

"No," the youngster answers.

"Well then you got lucky; you only got half the speech. If you'd let him get all the way through there would have been that part about how he's not so special—"

"He did say that," Smitty corrects him.

"And how there's better influences. And then he'd say how you were better off without him anyways. That's just Luke being an idiot. Somehow he actually figures that'll make you feel better about him leaving." It's a fool's sacrifice, but his cousin's always made it. _I ain't so great, so just forget all about me and go love someone else_. "He don't mean for you to take it badly. He's just an idiot, is all."

A bigger idiot than Bo's willing to explain, because even if he is saving Luke from drowning, there's still such a thing as privacy and protecting the vulnerabilities of a man that tries to pretend he doesn't have any. But he does, oh, Luke's his own worst enemy when it comes to these things. Because while Bo knows his cousin's full of all manner of crap when he goes saying how he's no one special, and it won't matter a bit if he's gone – well, Luke comes to believe the words, once they get out of his mouth. And, Bo figures, that's always been half his fault, for acting tough like Smitty's been doing, for pretending not to be hurt. For tacitly agreeing with the lies Luke tells.

"You asked what he wants – well that's pretty easy actually. He wants to know that he matters. That this place, and you guys, are better for him having been here." And that's something Luke would never ask for, hell, he'd threaten to kill Bo for suggesting he needs it. But then, Luke's exactly the kind of smart man that would somehow reckon that flailing himself into deeper water would be the best way to keep from drowning.

"How do you give someone that?" Smitty asks. He's not wholly convinced that this half-stranger in front of him is right, but he wants to believe. Bo remembers that feeling from all the times Jesse tried to explain how Luke didn't quite mean so many of the things he said.

"You just say it, I guess." And now he's playing the role of elder, pretending after being an adult. Jesse always said it wasn't such a terrible thing to be a grown up, but Bo pretty much assumed the old man was making lemonade out of the stooped posture and white hair lemons that life had handed him. Maybe he was, and maybe that's what Bo's doing now, because this acting like an adult thing seems to be working out pretty well, so far. "It ain't the kind of thing you can wrap up in pretty paper, maybe, but then Luke never was one for that kind of present anyways. He'd just shake it, tell you what was inside of it, then put it down without ever unwrapping it." Or at least he'd wait until no one else was looking before he opened anything, then he just went quietly about wearing it or using it, whatever it was, without any further fanfare. Nope, Luke never did quite get the hang of having anything like fun when it came to presents.

Makes this Doug Smith boy laugh a little bit, hearing about what a pain in the ass Luke has always been. "Sounds like he wasn't exactly easy to grow up with."

Yes and no. Being a kid next to Luke meant getting shoved around, told what to do, snorted at for being smaller and less coordinated. Meant putting up with sour moods and a lashing tongue, but it also meant never being alone, not when he faced a bigger kid's threats or when he had to go home to Jesse with dirty knees and an even dirtier confession to make. Meant Luke telling him not to be such a baby when he got a splinter in his finger, meant Luke carrying him home on piggyback after he got his shin caught on that old, rusty nail sticking out of the O'Connells' fence that they'd been hopping over as a shortcut home from school.

"Nah, he was a hell of a lot of fun when we was younger. He could stir up more trouble than a whole hive of bees at a church ladies' picnic," which is one of those old sayings that his NASCAR teammates laugh at him for, but he can't seem to stop coming out with them. "Watch the mess unfold, and then he'd walk away, innocent as a lamb."

"How come, if the two of you were so close, you didn't stay together? I mean, it just seems awful sudden how he's going home now, to be closer to you and your other cousin."

"Because," Bo tells him, "if Luke's an idiot, I'm a jackass. Now, can you tell me which realty Luke rents his cabin from?" Because he's done having that other conversation. This Doug kid is all right, mostly, but Bo's not about to go telling tales out of school. If Luke wants to tell him about the two of them, that's fine (or it's not really, but he can tolerate it since he doesn't reckon on ever seeing the boy again once they get back east) but Bo's not going to be the tattling kid cousin he used to get accused of being.

The boy shrugs. "I thought he owned it."

Which just goes to show that Bo's instinct to stop talking was a good one. If these jumpers of Luke's haven't been told the particulars of his living arrangements, it's clear enough they don't need to get any hints about who he shares his bed with.

"I figured I couldn't afford it," Smitty goes on, snapping Bo's attention back to the conversation. "But if it's for rent…"

"You interested?" Bo asks him, and feels the water level around his drowning cousin drop down an inch or two. He had expected he'd go take a chance on talking the realtor into being reasonable, and if good old fashioned Duke wheedling didn't work, he reckoned he'd just quietly pay off the balance of the lease and convince the realtor to act like he was simply letting Luke off the hook.

"My wife's pregnant. Don't tell her I said so." Bo wouldn't think of it. In fact, he can't swear he'd recognize her if she stood in front of him right now. "But we need a bigger place once the kid shows up."

"Well, Doug," he answers, "we might just be able to work something out. Just don't say nothing to Luke. I want him to think he came up with the idea." Because Dukes can't lie, but there's no rules against shucking and jiving. "Now hop out. I got to do some real quick grocery shopping."

Smitty offers up a small smile as he opens the door and slides off the seat, and for a split second Bo can see the little boy that lurks there under the tough guy exterior. Yeah, he knows why Luke likes this kid.

"See you Friday?" the boy calls. "And no chocolate, right?"

Bo gives him a two fingered salute, the kind Luke would scoff at for being unmilitary, but Smitty doesn't seem to mind. Just accepts it as agreement, before shutting the Jeep's door and heading back for the front door into that maze of a building Luke used to work in.

And when he's thrown enough groceries into a cart that he figures it might just look normal that he's been gone this long, then bagged them and packed them into the Jeep, when he's gotten them back to the cabin, loaded up his arms with them then kicked his way inside, he finds Luke in the middle of his hardwood floor, on his knees and surrounded by a collection of boxes. Seems like both Duke boys have been busy today.


	52. Up to Something

Up to Something

"I could have helped you, you know," gets shouted from the kitchen in between the sound of one cabinet slamming then another. Luke would go in there to preserve the wood finish if he thought Bo was doing any damage. He's not, he's just the same loud cousin he's always been. Besides, they're not exactly Luke's cabinets to protect anymore. "You could have waited."

The same theme, with only the most minor of variations, has been playing since the moment the man slammed his way through the front door. Seems to have gone on a little long, feels forced and strained.

"I figured you'd be happy enough about it." Not having to do the work, them getting out of this place that he knows Bo isn't really enjoying; Luke expected both would be a relief to Bo. "Besides, you're going to help me with the rest of it." He just didn't want his cousin, tsking over things that got tossed in the fire. Trying to pretend he wasn't thrilled to see any mementoes of old girlfriends burn, wanting to be fair and tell Luke he could keep things he doesn't really have any interest in anymore and has simply been too lazy to get rid of before now.

"Later," Bo answers, coming back from where he's just put away about six bags worth of groceries. Luke can't remember the last time there was this much food in the house, at least not when there wasn't the looming threat of a blizzard. "You ain't in a hurry, are you?"

Well, he's been doing nothing much more than sitting on his ass for more than a week, and the stated goal of the trip was to get him packed up and moved back to Hazzard, so it's hard to call it a hurry. More like catch up after long delay. Inertia had to be overcome, and now that it has, he reckons he'd best get on with what he came here to do.

He shrugs. "Ain't no point in putting it off."

Popping knees and Bo's getting down there on the floor along with him. Loud grunt, and it's just sad how quickly they've gone from being young and spry to turning into their Uncle Jesse. Though he's pretty sure he can still slide across the General's hood just as smoothly as he ever did.

"When was you thinking of leaving?" Bo asks, and it's one of those questions that tries to sound casual when it really isn't.

"I ain't a hundred percent sure. I still ain't figured out whether we need a truck." Or maybe just a bigger fire. But there are things that can't be burned, that absolutely have to go back with them. Which just happen to be exactly the same things that came all the way out here with him. "It'll be a couple of days yet."

"A couple of days," Bo echoes, picking through one of the boxes Luke has already packed. Leave it to Bo to offer his help then manage to do the exact opposite. "You really figure you can get everything done by then?" Dissatisfied with making a mess of only one box, Bo moves on to the next, starts poking around. "You got to cancel the electricity, get your mail forwarded…"

"Turn off the gas," Luke says, yanking the box Bo's crawling toward away from him before he can get into it. "I know that, Bo." After all, he's not the Duke cousin that would walk out of the house leaving the stove on and the water running, with only the barest hope that the two would cancel each other out. "Was you looking for something in particular?" Because Bo's going through his boxes like he expects to find something there, and it seems to him like he shouldn't have to go sifting through ashes in order to prove he's not bringing back any trinkets from past affairs.

"Nope," Bo answers, making his way over to yet another box, relentless in his efforts to disrupt Luke's organization. "I was just thinking, how come you're in such a hurry to get going? We ain't hardly done nothing here yet."

"That's because," he's breathing slowly, speaking through his clenched teeth. Trying with everything in him not to be provoked by the toddler that's crawling around his floor, poking curious fingers into places they don't really need to go. Somewhere about ten days ago, when they were halfway between Georgia and here, he decided he wanted this man. Figured that fifteen years of being apart hadn't worked out the way either of them might have hoped it would, reckoned that he'd missed the man more than he'd ever missed anything, even the boundless energy of youth and the hairline that used to be a good inch closer to his eyebrows than it is now. It would be a shame to have to kill his cousin already, before even two weeks have passed. "There ain't nothing much to do here. We already been over this, Bo." That last word comes close to being a bark; yet another box is at risk for rummaging, and Luke has some fantasy of preventing it with his tone of voice. Doesn't work.

"We ain't been skiing," Bo says, shrugging his shoulders. Or at least doing his best to shrug and dig through Luke's things at the same time.

"There ain't been no snow. If you want to ski, we got to head north, most likely." Besides, skiing is cold, and so far Bo hasn't shown any real inclination toward tolerating the climate of these relative lowlands.

"Okay," Bo says, as if going north had been an offer instead of a reason to give up on the notion of skiing.

At least his need to be destructive seems to be satiated now. Here comes Bo, on hands and knees, crawling right up to Luke's face. Kiss then, excited like the lick of a puppy, to seal the deal. Even if he has to realize that Luke hasn't agreed to anything.

Another kiss, this one more serious, and Luke can't shake the sensation that Bo is up to something. That thought gets lost in the third kiss, when Bo's hand comes up off the floor to catch the back of his neck.

"You figure," Luke asks when the kiss ends. Or pauses, maybe, because Bo doesn't go more than the distance it takes to press their foreheads together, gentle rub of noses. "When we get home, that we'll just do this all the time?" Because it seems to him like it's only been a few hours since the last time they were engaged in something much like this.

"I reckon," Bo answers, "we'll do it as often as you're up to it. I know," little grinning kiss there. "You're older than me and you ain't gonna be able to keep up all the time." Another kiss; cute how Bo follows it with that funny little frown of pity for his poor aging cousin. "But I'll try not to wear you out."

It's a distraction, wrapped up tidily and presented as a goad. Luke could peel back the layers, go looking for what's underneath this sudden need on Bo's part to keep him from packing, but there's that smug smile there popping up on the man's face that needs to be wiped off, first.

"You figure," he says as he's shoving against that wide rib cage in front of him. Should seem strange to touch another man like this, hands grabbing at places where breasts aren't, pushing him onto his back so their hips can find ways to nestle together, but it doesn't. No matter what they do or where their hands get to wandering, it's still Bo. He's known the body under his for his whole life, and if he'd never touched certain parts of it until a couple of weeks ago, it never mattered. Seems like he always knew what they felt like anyway. "You're going to have to slow yourself down for me?"

Convenient how the man topples so easily, how he finds his back and lets Luke crawl right up over him. "Well, yeah," he answers, hooking that hand behind Luke's neck again, must've lost the grip in his effort to accommodate the new position he's in. Pulling him down, another gentle kiss. One that seems to reckon he's old and fragile, easily injured. "But that's okay. It ain't your fault you're decrepit."

So much for sweet little kisses that protect a frail man from harm, he's got Bo pinned to the floor with most of his weight, kissing like wrestling, lips, teeth and tongues vying for position. Hands kneading on Bo's shoulders, reminding him which one of them has a physical strength equal to what it was when they dug ditches, built fences, lugged around heavy jugs of contraband whiskey for a living. One knee between Bo's spindly legs, off-center rub.

And just look who's already out of breath there underneath him – the young man with so much energy.

So Luke backs off, sits himself back onto Bo's leg to consider the situation. The floor's cold, but the fire's warm. There are boxes all around them, and he's pretty sure the door's not locked. There are more cons than pros to what they've started here. Which is why he starts to work open the buttons of Bo's shirt. Slowly, feeling each inch of skin that gets revealed.

"Just giving you a breather," he informs Bo.

Hands come up then from where they got dropped onto the floor as some part of aiding him in his undressing task. Luke's expecting another good yank against his neck, but those fingers never get that high; they stop at his collar and pull. Ripping sound, and he's not sure whether it's a seam or the middle of the cloth that tears. There's some small chance it's just buttons getting torn right off their threads, but he's pretty sure they wouldn't make that much noise.

"Bo," he snaps, as his shirt gets shoved back off his shoulders.

"I'm all rested up now," and there's the devil's grin there below him. Firelight in caught in that blonde hair, glowing across his face, and it's a dang good thing Bo's so damn pretty or Luke would have to kill him.

Luke shrugs off what's left of his shirt, tossing it off his wrist to land wherever the hell it wants to. Needs his hands free to get back to where he was working the buttons on Bo's shirt, because it seems like his kid cousin needs a lesson in treating clothes with a certain amount of respect. Lips then, following after his fingers down Bo's chest until he hits the soft stomach underneath. Arching below him, Bo meeting him more than halfway, panting sounds like maybe he's gotten a little to close to something hot. Too tempting, Luke finds himself a particularly sensitive spot and stays there, kissing, sucking, until he gets tugged up by the ears.

"Tired?" he asks the heavily breathing man below him, a fool's mistake. Kissing again, and somehow Bo's stealing his breath from him. Tickling down his chest, light touch of fingers, but it's that kiss that's making his head spin, making his eyes droop against the effort of staying open. Somewhere in there his pants get opened, smoothness of a palm there low on his belly. Kiss breaks as Bo's long fingers wrap themselves around him.

"Luke," he whispers, and that right there deserves some retaliation. Luke's kissing his way toward Bo's ear, but it gets twisted away from him. "I got something for you." That's very thoughtful of him, and they can discuss it later. Except for Bo's free hand there on his face, turning it away from that ear and making some attempt to look him in the eye. Stops mid stroke below, too, just to make sure he has all of Luke's attention.

"What?" he grunts. Doesn't sound old and tired, not to his own ears. No, it's closer to annoyed, he's pretty sure.

Hand off his face then, reaching around one of the nearer boxes, fishing. Funny how the other hand seems to explore Luke's nether reaches in sympathy, or maybe that's just meant to keep him relatively immobile until Bo manages to find whatever he's after.

"Here—here," Bo pants, holding up a bottle for Luke to look at. Clear liquid in a plastic container, bright orange price tag halfway covering the brand name. Mineral oil. "Luke, I want you to." His stomach twists, turns, flips right over inside of him. "Please."


	53. Keeping Luke from Drowning

Keeping Luke from Drowning

Luke's hand – right there on his jaw line, thumb stroking across his lips with a thoughtful sort of a sweep – shakes. A kiss follows after the brush of the thumb, but it's no stronger than the hand.

Gentle. Luke's fighting to be gentle, the behavior that got thrashed into him with the strap, never harder than after he'd hurt Bo. A bump rising up under blonde hair meant red welts on Luke's backside and legs, and somehow, this was meant to teach him how to control his temper. Damn it all, Jesse was one of the wisest men he ever met, and Bo loved him more than the sun that warmed the earth, but he never really understood the logic behind what he did when it came to Luke.

Whipped into Luke's body and soul: never supposed to hurt anyone smaller, weaker, already injured or sick. But Bo's not a single one of those things. That shaking hand that cups his cheek has forgotten that eventually those stumbling little legs surpassed Luke's in length, that his shoulders grew broad enough to bear weight. Nervous fingers worrying over marks they'll leave behind, but Bo's skin is not fragile, won't break if Luke touches it with the whole of his hand instead of restricting himself to lightly sweeping fingertips.

A shove against Luke's shoulder, he starts there. Doesn't give up against the strength and resistance in those tight muscles, just keeps on pushing. Knee up, quick movement, and they roll. Boxes slide and thump as they get banged into, but there's no real damage done, nothing crashes, clangs or shatters. Catching one wrist as Luke's looking around to see what they hit, he pins that arm against the floorboard. Uses his other hand to tap the floor three times and, "I win!" he pants out.

Struggle underneath him, the unfairness of the game protested and fought against in the way Luke pushes up on him, that free hand of his shoving at Bo's shoulder. Bo fights against it with all of his strength, then suddenly gives. The momentum of the resulting roll is greater than Luke expects, allowing him to push for a full three-sixty and wind up on top again. More boxes get nudged toward the corners of the room, but that's just as well – they need to get out of the way of two wrestling Duke boys.

"That's two," he announces when he comes up with the upper hand again. Technically it's nothing of the sort, Luke's not pinned by any means, but that body under his doesn't bother with arguments. There it is, finally, the full strength of Luke flipping him over. Powerful, corded muscles of his back stand out under where Bo's fingers cling onto him, hard, round shoulders above him, sweat glowing in the firelight. Reminds Bo of sunburned afternoons of shirtless farm work.

He pulls Luke to him then, kissing in equal pressure to the hands holding his shoulders down onto the floor beneath them. Reckless want and need there, because twice already since the time Bo asked, since they shucked their jeans, he's figured Luke to be ready, and twice it's somehow come down to a struggle to be gentle and careful. Two things Duke boys are not, and two things sex should never be. Fingers of one hand explore the length of Luke's back, over the curve of muscle to nestle in the hollow down low, then finally lower, until they're kneading there at that perfect curve of a backside. Meanwhile his right hand's up over his head, where he spotted the bottle of oil during their last tumble. The kiss, though, that's the most important thing to hold onto through it all.

Plastic, spinning, skidding away from his fingers, and there's a laugh right there into his lips. Of course there is, and he should have expected it, because even when kisses are powerful enough to make Bo's head whirl with vertigo, Luke never closes his eyes. The man can make out and watch Bo flail around after a runaway bottle at the same time, and that's just wrong.

Wrestling again, hand off Luke's backside and shoving against his shoulder. An attempt to roll them one more time, effort to get to that forgetful place where caution doesn't exist and vision isn't necessary. Luke fights him back, seems to like the position they've found, and that's good to know. They'll come back here.

First, though, he shoves and nudges and wiggles, and if they don't exactly roll, there's enough of a slip and slide, a laugh and a bumped elbow, floor-burn on Luke's knees.

"You're making this," Luke puffs into his ear, "much harder than it has to be."

Look who's talking.

But he doesn't say that, just uses his neck muscles to pull up off the floor, lets his lips find Luke's. He feels that same hand that was shaking earlier come into his hair, holding his head up with all its strength. Then, finally, when he doesn't have to fight against the resistance of Luke above him or gravity below, he manages to grab the bottle of mineral oil. A little laugh of victory, then Luke's wrestling him down again.

The bottle, it turns out, is the prize that the grappling man above him wants. And although it was intended to be a gift, he's not so sure he's ready to give it up. Seems like letting Luke control too much of any given situation is like shoving a stick of lit dynamite up the barrel of a squirrel gun – never know whether it'll explode too early and in all the wrong places.

Long arms are his friend, he manages to keep what Luke wants just beyond his grip. Mostly, but there is, as Rosco used to say, a flaw in his slaw. Sweaty, both of them are slick with moisture, and the tighter he grips at the bottle, the more it wants to slip away from him. And that right there would be a disaster – having to find their way back to this place that he's worked so dang hard to get them to.

"Lukas," he tries, but he's breathless, giggling. "I get to," Luke's climbing him like a tree, and it's working pretty damned well. "I want to," there's a feel, a reverence that has happened each time that Luke's hand, covered in oil, has wrapped itself around him. Not like anything else they do, neither better nor worse, just special in its own right. Bo reckons it's nothing Luke can do to himself. "I," have no chance of winning this struggle now, too much breath has been given over to the effort to talk, "want—Luke, wait."

Movement stops then, Luke's hands leave off grabbing at his arm to push against the floor, and he's sitting up. Straddled across Bo's torso, eyebrow cocked, and he's waiting. Toe-tappingly waiting for the brilliance of Bo, so he can tear the words down to their bear bones, look into the structure, and point out all the flaws and dangers.

But discussions, particularly those held with one Luke Duke, are a waste of time and breath, neither of which he figures he has a lot to spare. So he just takes advantage of the waiting game Luke's playing and opens the bottle. Or tries anyway, but it's one of those dang child-friendly things, where arrows need to be lined up, or maybe a palm needs to be shoved down against the top, and it's nothing that can be done easily while he's flat on his back, pressed there by the hot weight of an exceedingly patient cousin.

"You done now?" Luke asks him, but he doesn't wait for the answer, just snatches the bottle out of Bo's sweaty fingers.

"Luke," he complains, but it's too late now.

"I'll give it back," get muttered back at him, same words he would've used when they were kids and he'd swiped Bo's toy away, but with a totally different sound to them – distracted, maybe. Bastard makes getting the cap off look easy, then dips out the smallest bit of oil, rubbing it between his thumb and his fingers – and thinking.

See now, maybe this is why he ought to get the oil spreading rights, at least this first time. Seems to him that Luke got to decide exactly how much slick stuff they used when it was his ass on the line.

He's about to make a case for himself, defend his rights, when Luke slides off of him. "Relax, Bo," he says, handing the bottle to him, followed by the cap. Clean hand on his face then, thumb against cheekbone. _Trust me_ in the gesture, as if that had ever been the issue. Bo screws the cap lightly onto the bottle, and holds the whole mess out to the side.

A kiss then, and his free hand finds Luke's shoulder, sliding down his arm to the elbow, following the movement. Feels the way it slides ever lower, even as Luke's sprawling out beside him. Hand on his thigh, thumb stroking, tickling, forcing him to move that leg out of the line of assault. Knee up, seems like a good idea, until suddenly it's obvious that it was exactly what Luke wanted from him. Better access, and now there are fingers there pressing against him. Inside – one of them is anyway – and his body has to figure out how to accommodate the new sensation. Not bad, just strange, but it's all right because it's Luke. It's Luke's hand slipping into his hair, Luke lips on his, Luke's short little breaths exhaling onto his cheek, Luke's arm he's rubbing his hand up then back down as some kind of encouragement. Luke's middle finger joining the index, and he has to break the kiss at that, gasp in some extra air.

"All right?" he gets asked, close into his ear, fingers stilling inside him.

Nothing to do but let go of that arm, bring his hand up to Luke's neck and pull him to where he wants. Kissing them both to that forgetful place where nothing matters but want and need, until that hand slips out of him and away so he can roll onto his side, one leg over both of Luke's and grinding together there.

His right hand's still got the oil in it, seems like an obstacle, seems like something he needs to get out of their way.

"Luke," he whispers when he reckons his cousin's brain is about as far from here as it can get. There's a nod there, sweat-wet hair brushing against his face. It's time. Bo rolls onto his back, bracing himself on his elbows while Luke gets to his knees there between Bo's legs. Ample amount of oil gets poured into Bo's hand. Fire there in his gut, could be the effort to hold himself up with only stomach muscles, could be what they're about to do. Slippery hand closes around Luke, spreading the oil while he watches those blue eyes droop. Still open, still focused on him, but Luke's about as ready as he'll ever get.

When they've done this the other way, it's been with the aid of pillows. But Luke is strong, Bo can feel it there under his hand, which comes to rest on that muscle-hard shoulder after he's capped the oil and laid back again. Feels it flex as Luke leans forward for one more kiss, feels it tense when his legs get lifted. Tickling, teasing kiss there against the inside of his thigh, and then Luke's pressed against him.

Second thoughts – all the second, third and fourth thoughts he's had since that night that the idea first got introduced in nervous little whispers – come back to him now. About pain, and whether a body was even meant to do this, how it's nothing like he's ever done before, nothing he's ever wanted and—

Luke hesitates there, bearing Bo's weight across his upper arms, no longer kissing, just watching. Assessing, more like, worrying. Calculating relative sizes, planning his next move and considering all the ways in which it could go wrong.

His hand tightens on Luke's shoulder, a reminder of the fact that he's not a little boy anymore, that his arms are long enough to reach and his hands strong enough to squeeze. Convinces them both that he's ready for this with that single gesture.

Pressure then, and yes, pain, but he holds onto Luke through it, same as he ever has when something hurt him, and that makes it bearable. Recognizes the moment when there's no more movement, knows that hesitation there, and how hard it is to maintain. Waiting for some sign that it's all right to do what Luke's body wants so badly to do.

Bo kneads at Luke's shoulder, showing him the pace he wants this to take. Feels the response, closes his eyes and lets it happen. Movement, and it takes a few tries before they find the right angle, before that hand on Luke's shoulder goes from grasping to encouraging. From there it's all sensation, no thought, which is how it comes to pass that he has no idea how Luke has freed one hand to wrap around him and stroke.

Too much then, colors behind his eyelids (and this is what his cousin misses by never closing them, one hell of a spectacular light show), sound of his own gasps, echoed by Luke's, feel of a wave crashing down over him—

He's almost too far gone to notice how Luke thrusts an extra two or three times before letting out a cry that sounds an awful lot like his name. Close then, Luke's laying there on his chest, breathing heavily in his ear, holding onto him like a he's a life preserver.

And somewhere out of all the static in his brain and body, and single thought emerges. Today, at least, he kept Luke from drowning.


	54. The Loud One

The Loud One

He doesn't want to sleep exactly. Not really, more like rest. Let his body recuperate, and if a few minutes pass that he's unaware of, that would be all the better.

If Bo would shut up.

"Hey Luke?" he says again, might be the second or third go-round, always timed exactly to match the moment that he's just getting peaceful.

"Mmm?" he answers, because he's awake, because he's heard his name spoken. Same stupid mistake he's made all his life of sharing space with Bo Duke. One fine day he'll learn to ignore the man.

"I want to ski." Of course he does. Right now, most likely, he reckons he wants to bounce up and resume exerting himself. After all, it must have been a good three minutes since he was gulping down air like he'd run a marathon. (And maybe what they'd done came close to a marathon after all. It's not like they're exactly kids anymore.)

The previous request was to stay up here a little longer so they can hike more of the land. Clearly blisters from a couple of days ago have already healed over and old iron foot over there thinks he's up to walking all the way back to Hazzard. Or maybe skiing there.

"No snow," Luke points out.

"You said we could go north."

He'd said no such thing. "I said we'd _have to_ go north." If they wanted to find any snow at all, and he couldn't attest to its condition when they got there. Could be that man-made stuff that doesn't do much more than slush around under skis and isn't anything to go learning on.

_White expanse of nothingness – powder, they call it here where they get enough frozen precipitation to give it multiple names based on texture – in front of him, no sign of human interference in the pristine landscape. Weightless flight, but he feels the side-to-side sway as he slaloms his way down—_

"Hey Luke?"

"Yeah?" If it comes out a little grumpy, he can hardly be blamed. One more _hey Luke_ while he's resting his eyes and letting his mind drift (but not sleeping) and he's going to be forced to find one of their haplessly discarded socks just so he can ram it down Bo's throat.

The man could learn a lesson from the fire, crackling quietly now as it burns down. Providing heat without asking to be entertained or conversed with in any way. Soon enough their sweat is going to dry, and the chill of the hardwood floor will seep its way through their skin, but for now the flames are keeping them quiet company.

"We need to stay here through Friday. We can leave Saturday if you want."

He yawns his lack of concern over the subject, and considers how much effort it would take to unstick his hand from Bo's belly skin, where it's currently resting, and lift it up to cover the man's mouth. Might get himself bitten for his efforts, but then again, maybe the loud man whose shoulder his head is resting on would finally get the hint.

"And we have to go out Friday night." Fingers start to move around then, form where they've been resting on his back. Up into his hair and threading their way through in a way that's as distracting as it is relaxing. "All right?"

"Fine," he mumbles, because Friday has no particular meaning to him other than he knows it's not right now, and has nothing to do with anything important. Like letting his body tick down, and his eyes rest (but definitely not sleeping).

He gets kissed for that, just a quiet press of lips against his forehead, reward for being an agreeable boy. Reminds him of Aunt Lavinia, how she'd take him aside after some kind of altercation or other – with cousins or at school – followed by the wrath of Jesse. There were words then, about how he was loved so very much, and that was why she and Jesse worked so hard at bringing him up right. Because they wanted him to be the best Luke he could be. _You understand, don't you sweetheart? _she'd ask, and even if she hadn't made a lick of sense, he'd nod his head, just to see her smile. She'd bend then, kiss his forehead and say—

"I love you, Luke," comes through the fog of half-sleep, and whether he actually manages to echo it, or whether that part's a dream, he can't be sure.

He shifts, gets constricted. Pushes against the resistance to unstick his face from the skin below it.

"Sorry," gets mumbled at him as he frees a hand to rub at his eyes. "I just wasn't ready for you to move yet."

Yet. The fire's down to embers, the skin on the back of his arms has begun to prick up into goose bumps, and his stomach seems to think it's well into afternoon without any solid food having been offered to it.

"Bo," he complains, because even if they've loosened enough to let him get an elbow under him, those long arms still hold him in a remarkably snug grip.

"What?" Such a sullen sound to it, a little boy halfway to a sulk already about the toy that's going to be taken from him, and Luke hasn't gone anywhere yet.

Palms on the floor now, shoving himself up, and Bo's grip finally loosens with a huff. On his knees, and he offers a hand, but the four-year-old that his cousin's channeling is too busy sulking to care.

"Do you think," Luke asks him, as he gets his feet under him. Sore thigh muscles, and he wonders how much of a limp Bo will have picked up in that left leg that never did seem to be able to keep pace with his right. He offers a hand again, as soon as he's stable on his feet. "You could behave if we took a shower together?"

There it is, the grin that's brighter than the fire ever was, melting out of a pout that Bo's face has already forgotten. Hand fitting firmly into his, letting Luke bear the brunt of his weight, loose-limbed like he doesn't have any muscles to pull himself up. Stumble-step when he's about halfway there, and yeah, Bo can behave himself. It's right there in how he gets up like a camel, slow and careful, one leg at a time.

They really should go into the bedroom first to dig through the dresser and closet for clean clothes. Socks and boots because the floor is still plenty cold at this end of the cabin. But then there's the way Bo's stretching muscles and pretending not to. Acting like he's just walking, when it's perfectly clear that he's favoring that left leg like he does after a hard run or long walk from the law. Warm water seems more important than clothes for now.

It's funny how, following on the awkward way Bo climbs over the chipped edge of the old, porcelain tub, they both resist the urge to rub at what hurts him. Long, lean muscles that never did seem to catch up with the growth of bone underneath, prone to knotting up. Both of them pretending that Bo isn't hurting, both of them knowing full well that he is. Instead of breaking the tacit vow of silence on the subject, he nudges Bo to be directly under the warm spray, letting the residual splashes suffice for his own bathing needs.

"Luke," Bo says, somewhere around the time he's wearing a layer of soap on his chest, oddly reminiscent of a ruffled tuxedo shirt. The kind of thing only Bo Duke would manage to make look cute. "Your lease. Does it say it has to be you that lives here?"

Strange question. "What, you thinking of taking my place?" Which would only be entirely counter-productive really, Luke heading back to Georgia and leaving Bo behind with no real purpose for being in Montana, just shivering his way through the spring and well into summer. Then there's the fall right behind, and come late October, when his lease ends, there'll be plenty of snow. Which the man did say he wants to see, but that's only because he hasn't yet experienced the way it piles up in these parts.

"No," he answers, turning sideways to wash the silly bubble shirt off his chest. If this means that Luke gets splashed in the face, well, Bo doesn't even notice. He leans against the tile and out of the secondhand water spray until the rinse cycle completes and Bo settles into his next wash cycle. "I was just thinking, if the realtor isn't going to find another tenant, maybe _you_ could."

Sure, why not? Hell, maybe whoever the Forest Service transfers into his team leader position will want to live here and then his replacement will be complete. Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun to him, making sure that Luke Duke gets entirely erased from this corner of the country where he's spent fourteen years imagining that he's done something of value.

But the suggestion is offered in good faith, with no malice intended. So he just nods his head to acknowledge what he's heard.

"You ain't getting clean over there in the corner, cousin."

Luke shrugs at that. "I'm getting half the water and plenty of leftover soap," he points out. "And I wasn't near as dirty as you to begin with."

Bo disagrees; it's all there in the way he looks down his nose. Too close, always to close, making Luke tip his head back. But then, it seems to work for Bo, this crowding nonsense. Gives him a chance to wrap on arm around Luke's neck and the other across his back to pull him directly into the shower's stream. Nice thought, poor execution, the way there's suddenly water blinding him.

"Bo," he complains, pulling back enough to rub at his eyes with thumb and forefinger.

"If you closed them, that wouldn't happen." Excellent advice, sounds just like something Aunt Lavinia probably taught him back in nineteen sixty-two or so. But before he can let loose his tongue with incisive commentary on how Bo's grown up to become a middle-aged woman, there are conciliatory fingers pushing his hair back from his face in some attempt to redirect the rivulets dripping from it away from his eyes. The hands linger there, weaving through wet strands, and it's interesting how fascinated with his hair Bo seems to become when it gets wet. He half wonders whether he ought to let his cousin scrub the shampoo through it for him, but dismisses the idea as foolishness.

"Bo," he asks as he reaches back for the bottle. "Why do we got to stay until Saturday?" Seems to him like his cousin ought to be standing on one foot and then the other, impatiently waiting for him to hurry up and get them out of this cold place where there's nothing to do but snipe at each other. Where Bo cooks and looks after him like a housewife, patting him on the head when he's had a lousy day (or holding onto him while all the world spins at his feet, too dizzyingly for him to want to put a foot down for fear of dropping into a ravine); this is no life for the action-lover in front of him. "And where are we going on Friday night?"

Those hands drop to his shoulders then, thumbs on his chin to keep him facing forward.

"Luke, I love you." There it is, a second chance to echo the words back at Bo, but it gets interrupted by a kiss. "Now shut up."

As if _Luke_ is the loud one.


	55. Snow Fights

Snow Fights

They never do manage to ski. But Luke finds them some snow, and then more snow finds them until it's just too perfect to leave unsullied.

Hardly needs to be more than a day trip, but he talks Luke into spending an overnight up north. They pack their warmest clothes, though Luke balks at sleeping bags and tents.

"I ain't," he says, and he's the same obnoxious older cousin he's ever been. "Gonna be responsible for you getting frostbite." As if Bo were still smaller than him, as if Jesse would be waiting at home to dole out heavy doses of guilt to fools who let their kin get hurt.

But the fact of not sleeping with just canvas and down between his backside and the snow seems perfectly reasonable to Bo, so he accepts his good fortune cheerfully. "I ain't the one who figures it's a waste of money to get a hotel room, anyways." Well, mostly cheerfully; it seems important to point out that he's not the stickler when it comes to camping.

"Yeah well, we ain't gonna be alone in that hotel, neither," he gets reminded. Duke boys have to be on their best behavior because the neighbors might talk. It ought to be good practice for heading back to Georgia where the state pastime consists of deep discussions of the activities of family, friends, acquaintances, and people that just showed up yesterday.

Luke estimates the drive at five hours, and Bo reckons they could do it in four if he drove. But, "You wanted to see snow," his cousin insists, "so you get shotgun where you can look out the window." Which doesn't exactly sound like what he signed on for, but he reckons old sourpuss there just needs to put some miles between himself and this lonely little crest he's lived on for so many years.

So he gets in the passenger seat and doesn't complain about the springs there pushing up against his backside, just dutifully looks out the window. At concrete and dirt, brown grass and guardrails, because they're on the interstate and there's nothing much to see. He can't be held accountable for how he gets bored or the way that his hands are itching to be on the steering wheel, and if they can't be there, it's not his fault that the left one finds its way into Luke's hair. He gets a look for that, flat-lipped little glare before his cousin has to turn his head back to watch the road. _We ain't gonna be alone in that hotel and we ain't alone on this road _is in that look_, _but it's a faulty argument, so Bo ignores it. This isn't exactly a country road, they're moving at about eighty (which is too dang slow if you ask Bo), and no one's bothering to look into one nondescript, aging brown Jeep as it bounces over seams in the road. And when, maybe five minutes later, his arm gets tired of the way it's stretched across the gap between their seats (nothing like a good, old-fashioned bench seat, and he looks forward to exploring the finer uses of the General's older seats with Luke), and he pulls it back to his own side of the car, there's another look. This one is a flash of blue out of the right corner of those eyes, then it's gone. Makes Bo smile, makes him decide that it's not such a bad thing for Luke to miss being touched, so he folds his hands chastely in his lap for the rest of the stretch of interstate driving.

Once they hit Route 93, it's a whole different landscape. Dirty remnants of snow and ice begin to line the road and there are more trees and lakes. There are also more potholes, which means they have to go slower, but that's all right. Before long a snow-covered mountain comes into view to the east.

"There's snow up there in July," Luke informs him when he points it out. A school lesson in glaciers follows, which Bo mostly ignores. That is, up until Luke mentions that the Forest Service has an airport not ten miles from here; one of the places where his flights originate. His cousin has all of his attention then, but it seems like he's run out of words he feels like saying. Somewhere around there, his hand finds its way into those curls at the back of Luke's head again, and if his cousin doesn't acknowledge the gesture in any kind of a direct way, he does seem to relax just slightly into the touch.

There's some beautiful scenery up here, making him appreciate how Luke sat him over here where he could concentrate on it. A lake with a skim of ice over it and a rim of white around, but underneath he can see the deep blue water about the same as the bluest crayon in his childhood box, which he used until Luke pointed out to him how Hazzard's ponds were actually kind of brown.

Kalispell, it turns out, is their destination. Bigger and prettier than either Opportunity or Anaconda, surrounded by snow covered mountains and a national park just a stone's throw away. "We did some controlled burns there a couple of years back," Luke says by way of explaining his familiarity with the area, but Bo suspects he's been up here more often than that. He's a Duke; there's no doubt he'd seek solace in mountains.

They settle on the Outlaw Inn, where Luke gets them a room with two beds. It smells like a used ashtray, it's dark and somewhat cramped. The sort of place he'd complain about if he were on the road for a race, but Luke doesn't seem to mind. Besides, it's better than the Hazzard Hotel, with those cardboard-thin walls and shoebox sized rooms, so he lets it go.

The rest of daylight is spent driving up into the park, where snow pack is waist high. Not that he walks through it, he just wanders over to where it's been plowed off the road, and measures himself against it. Luke shakes his head at Bo's fascination with the stuff, but that doesn't keep him from standing next to him and figuring out how high up his chest the snow level comes before dragging him back over to where he parked the Jeep.

Coming back out of the mountains and into town takes longer than going up did, thanks to the encroaching dark. By the time they get back to the hotel they are ravenous, so they spend a couple of hours at the hotel restaurant, eating and having a few beers. It's nothing at all like their younger years of drinking and fighting side-by-side at the Boar's Nest, but there's a moment, somewhere in the middle of him talking about last year's Charlotte 500, with its fast track and high groove, when he catches Luke watching him with a loose and easy smile like he's rarely seen in the years since they had to give up moonshining. Oh, his unemotional cousin covers it up with the lip of his mug the second he realizes he's caught, but for a fleeting second, Luke Duke was just plain enjoying himself.

They aren't alone in the hotel, as Luke reminds him when they get back to the room, so after they make one bed look slept in before climbing into the other, they do nothing more than kiss good night.

He wakes to an empty bed and an eerie light. But Luke hasn't gone any further than the window, where he's pulled back the curtain for a look at the outside world.

"It snowed," he announces when he sees that Bo is awake. It's said at somewhere around the caliber of a grumble, but just because old grumpy over there isn't excited about it doesn't mean those aren't just about the most perfect words Bo has ever heard. He's up and at Luke's side in seconds, dazzled by the glints shining like stars in a seas of white when he moves. And even if he does roll his eyes, his cousin comes easily enough with a tug of Bo's hand. "Long underwear," he gets reminded, because all his life, Luke has figured that it's necessary to tell Bo how to manage daily tasks, from getting dressed to driving a car. (Funny how he manages to hold his tongue when it comes to getting his meals made for him, however.)

Maybe it's because it's still relatively early in the morning, or maybe it's got more to do with the fact that Montanans see plenty of snow over the course of a year, but the Dukes have the whole expanse of it to themselves, just behind the hotel in what is probably a meticulously mowed green lawn come summer. Pristine, untouched, until two pairs of cowboy boots start marching through. Not nearly as deep as what they saw last night, but it comes halfway up his shins to cling to his jeans there, and it's soft. Nothing like those rare snowfalls in Hazzard; slippery, wet, quick to melt and mix in with mud, and what a mess they used to be after playing in it. This right here is closer to the sort of fairy stuff Daisy's always believed in and Luke's always denied the existence of, leaving Bo to make up his own mind. Seems to him like their female cousin got this one right.

So beautiful, he can't help but touch it. Ignores the way it makes his hands ache at the icy contact – the same way he's ignoring how hard it is to breathe this frozen air – and packs it into a slippery ball. Cocks his arm back and throws it at Luke.

Sad little lopsided wad, it breaks back up into the fine bits it started as before it even gets halfway there, but Luke is perfectly aware of what his intentions were. Shakes his head at southern boys who haven't got the first idea when it comes to dealing with the white stuff.

"That ain't how you pack a snowball, Bo." Which isn't technically true – it's how he's done it all his life, and it's always worked out before. But he watches Luke, even as he blows on his pink fingers to warm them back up from what they were just touching.

Meticulous, that's Luke. Takes his time constructing the perfect snowball, balancing it for weight and size, no doubt, smoothing it lovingly before packing it down some more. Finally, he's happy with it. Points out a tree he's going to aim for, winds up his pitching arm and makes to throw a perfect strike before turning on one foot and picking Bo off at first base. Shatter of snow against his chest. Doesn't hurt, not like the slush-balls of their Georgia youth, but there's a cold spray of snow into his face where it breaks apart, and the game is on.

If he can't make a ball of it, Bo can at least pick up large quantities and throw them in a rough equivalent to splashing his cousin with pond water, he can hold onto small bits of it and try to jam them down the collar of Luke's sweatshirt. He can squirm out of where his cousin's mashing a handful of the stuff into his hair, step back then take Luke down at the knees in the closest thing his forty-two-year-old body can come remembering how to tackle. He can wrestle for top, try his damnedest to shove Luke's face into the stuff before it gets rubbed across his own cheeks. They tumble over each other a few times, all hard elbows and knees, and as the snow beneath them crunches under their weight, it stops being quite so soft and forgiving.

"Bo." Luke has stilled beneath him. "Get off."

"You hurt?" he asks as he obeys, until he's on his knees in the snow, not touching the man with white powder sticking to him everywhere that's not warm skin.

Flat-lipped glower for that; of course his cousin's not hurt. Shoot, even if he couldn't stand, had to lean on Bo's shoulders for support, he wouldn't be hurt. Or even tired, he'd be just fine, with an odd hankering to hold onto Bo.

"No," Luke says, unnecessarily. They both knew it was the only word he'd possibly say under the circumstances. "We should go back inside. We ain't in this hotel alone."

No, they're not, they've already discussed this. But now that they're not shoving at each other, now that the snow that got under his collar has melted to slide down his back like a coldly cruel imitation of sweat, he reckons it wouldn't be such a bad thing if they took this discussion inside. So he jams his suddenly frozen hands into his packets and leads the way.

Funny how only a few minutes ago the snow seemed dry to him; once they get into the warmth of the hotel, what's stuck to him begins to melt. Sure, his jeans darken at the knees with the dampness, but it's the ice-water dripping out of his curls and down his neck that makes him miserable. The second the door to their dark, cigarette-smelling room gets closed, he's yanking off that flannel shirt of Luke's that was his top layer, and trying to dry his hair with it. Too wet, so he strips the next layer and the next, down to his t-shirt, and he's kicking off his boots and jeans by the time Luke comes back from where he disappeared into the bathroom.

"Sit," he says, pulling up a chair to the edge of the bed he just pointed to, tossing him a towel. Grabs one of Bo's hands away from where it's drying his hair, looks at the color of it and starts to rub. It hurts at first, the warm blood running back into his fingers, but he knows better than to complain. It'll only lead to the skin getting chafed right off his hands in a more vigorous attempt to hasten his blood flow.

Besides, "You're still in them wet clothes," he points out. "Luke. I ain't exactly got frostbite or nothing." He tosses the towel back at his cousin and starts rubbing his hands against one another as proof that he can warm himself up. "You get dry."

Which, in his too-tough cousin's case, consists entirely of running the towel over his hair. Funny little mess of curls there, reminding him of all those times their various escape routes included creeks and rivers, how the minute they got done with their impromptu swims, Luke would push his hair back away from his face, and just let it dry wherever it fell. The man never had the first idea how to deal with the uncontrollable curls that Duke men were cursed with.

"Cousin," he says, pulling at his cousin's wet sweatshirt. Seems to him that forcefully changing the man's clothes ought to be a more effective way to get the blood flowing in his hands, anyway. "We was just… doing what we done all our lives, wrestling." Playing, competing, they've always been physical. "I know we ain't alone, but we would have done that same thing twenty years ago, and you wouldn't have thought twice about it." Of course back then, they could have shared the title for biggest ladies' men in Hazzard, had there been one. Or maybe not, the way Boss always rigged any competition in his own favor, but the popular vote would always have gone to the Duke boys.

His cousin decides to be a good boy, actually lifting his arms up to help with the removal of the outer layer of his clothes. "It ain't twenty years ago," comes after a sigh. "I just figure that it ain't smart to go giving no one a reason to guess at what's going on."

_What's going on_ – if he were younger he'd pick at those words, take them apart to their barest meaning and point out how they don't even begin to describe the relationship between him and Luke. And, he reckons, he might still do just that. But not right now, not when he's in the middle of making another point.

"We done it when we was camping." In South Dakota, in the freezing waters of a creek near their campsite. His body had shivered, but it wasn't the water that had done it, it was those kisses when they ducked underneath, the feel of Luke's hands on his wet skin. "And Mindy didn't never notice."

"Mindy was a mess," Luke points out. "And besides, she was crazy for you, so she wasn't looking too hard."

Mindy wasn't any more crazy for him than she was for Luke. The woman was just plain crazy, maybe. And his older cousin still has no inkling of just how attractive he really is. They've both always referred to Bo as the pretty one, but Luke is – the man just gets better with each passing year.

"Get out of those jeans, cuz." Seems like a reasonable change of subject; he doesn't want to argue about Mindy Collins.

Rolled eyes, annoyed stare. "We still ain't alone in this hotel, Bo."

Which is immaterial. "I ain't got no plans on starting nothing." He just wants Luke dry, wants him on the bed and close, wants to share the same warm space.

Huffing sigh, and Luke stands to peel his wet pants down off his thighs.

"Besides, we ain't even wrestled in front of him, and I reckon Smitty's pretty close to figuring it out." He sits back down on the edge of the bed to kick those wet pants off of his feet, and Bo runs a hand through those wet, dark curls at the back of his head. As soon as the jeans are gone, the grip changes, tightens down on his shoulder and pulls that powerful body to lie down next to his. His chest against the sway of that back; he spoons his longer body around Luke's.

"Would it be," his right arm wraps over chest muscles, rubbing against the t-shirt there. Skin on skin would be so much better, but he's not supposed to be starting anything. "So bad if he knew?" Because that Smitty – well he might just be as close to working it out as Luke thinks.

"I don't know. Maybe me leaving would be easier on him if he knew. I reckon he'd let me go pretty easy, then. Might even hate me, I don't know."

"Lukas." He tightens his grip on the man, because it's never predictable whether his cousin will present a flight risk once the honesty starts to flow. "It ain't gonna help him one bit to hate you. If you really think he's going to hate you, then don't tell him. Don't go trying to push him away with this." A kiss against the back of Luke's neck to soften the scolding. "You always figure it's your job to make other people get over you leaving them behind. You push them away so they won't miss you, but it don't work. They're gonna miss you when you leave, and there ain't no point in them missing you before you're gone. If Smitty wants to care about you, let him." Another kiss, this time to reward the man for staying close, for listening, not shoving him away or shouting him down. "And if you want to tell him about us, if you figure he has a right to know, you tell him. But don't go using it to push him away from you. Ain't no reason to go hurting him like that." Or for Luke to go hurting himself like that, but that part goes better without saying.

Silence, long stretch of time with nothing more than the sheets rustling under them with each stroke of his hand along the lines of muscle on Luke's chest.

"You feel like," breaks the silence. "Staying up here another day?"

Bo kisses him one last time, this time for reading his mind. "Long as we get back down to Opportunity by Friday," he agrees.


	56. The Public Party

The Public Party...

He put some serious consideration into avoiding this. Had the rudiments of a plan in place, and if he'd demanded Bo's loyalty as a Duke, he would have gotten it.

Wasn't hard to figure out why they had to stay until Friday, not when he spared himself a brain cell or two to thinking on the subject. And he wavered on it for a while, considered leaving earlier anyway, thought about staying up in Kalispell awhile longer, but in the end he reckoned he owed it to his pups to let them perform whatever farewell ritual they thought they needed to. So he'd dutifully let Bo tell him how to dress, slicked down his hair to presentable, given over his keys to his cousin, pretended not to notice how, when they wound up at the diner, all the cars parked outside were familiar, and made himself jump when the word 'surprise' got loudly screamed at him.

"Duke was a great jumper and an even better team leader. Even if I do want to kick his ass for leaving us now," if he's nothing else, Rico Martinez is at least honest. "He's still one of the best men I've even known. Good luck to you, Duke."

It's speech time, after a bison steak dinner, which followed on freely flowing cocktails – if you could call beer a cocktail, and as a general rule, smoke jumpers do. Unless Luke misses his guess, there's a sickly sweet cake coming soon, and he's going to have to open those presents sitting over there, poorly wrapped in frighteningly garish paper. Seems to him that these boys of his needed a team mother to teach them the finer points of party-throwing. Daisy would have been in her glory making this place pretty with crepe paper, the food would have been inexpensive, but flawlessly prepared, and they'd all be drinking out of fluted champagne glasses. And, as an added bonus, his girl cousin would have had all these boys to hover over and care for, even as they tried to sneak a peek down her blouse.

He smiles gamely and lifts his bottle, accepting the toast that Rico has offered, even if he reckons that staying home and letting Bo pull out his eyelash hairs one-by-one would be less painful than this.

Before Martinez there was Marks, telling slightly elliptical tales of Luke's less graceful moments – having to rappel out of a tree, but it happened to the best of them, and it was certainly better when it was him having to work his way down from high branches than it was when a less-experienced man had to do it – and some of his finer ones. His 'terrain relocation project' as punishment for smart-ass boys trying to be lazy in their physical training, that one was genius. The armloads of dirt he made them dig up then carry from one end of the exercise yard to the other, after which they had to dig a new hole to put it into. What they had dug up got carried back across and put into the original hole. Oh they were filthy, they were angry, they were exhausted, but they got themselves a good workout that day. And didn't sass him for weeks.

Of course, there are details that Marks left out, like that first jump when Luke had to just about carry him back out, but that's all right. With any luck the kid has forgotten it in his current arrogance and drive toward promotion, and he'll need every ounce of that cockiness whenever he does get his own team.

Wiggins went before that, his face as red as his hair, stumbling over words of gratitude, and the warm up man had been Conklin, cracking bad jokes that both the kid and Bo thought were hilarious, while the rest of the audience chuckled (relatively – they were his boys, after all) politely.

Smitty gets introduced as the man who planned this fine affair, and the final speaker of the night. Seems like his youngest jumper got the diner shut down to everyone but members of the Anaconda Branch of the United States Forest Service, had Sherrie cooking all afternoon, made sure there were enough beer kegs in the place to ensure this corner of Montana as the least safe place to drive tonight. Probably shopped for whatever those oddly shaped packages are, and there's not a single doubt in Luke's mind that he wrapped them himself.

All the tables in the place have been moved to the center of the room to make one huge, approximate rectangle of a table. Different heights and awkward joints, with Luke at what serves as the head. Bo to his left, because that's how they've always sat, and Wiggins over on his right, with more of his boys scattered down the length of the thing, and Rico at the far end. Morton's guys are there too, Hendricks's and even some men that moved out of Anaconda and on to other branches years ago. Smitty must have put out an all-call to get them here.

The kid's blushing now, fingers fiddling with the fork that's still in his hand, even if he did stand up to take center stage. Halfway down the line of men on the right, with Michelle there at his side, patting down that one strand of hair that always sticks out to the side. His eyes meet Luke's for a second, then his back straightens and his hands still. His voice manages to be clear of trembles when he speaks.

"I ain't – I haven't," he corrects himself, because Smitty didn't grow up with a natural tendency to use _ain't_. That was something he picked up in the fields and forests of the northern Rockies, listening to Luke and the rest of the boys mangle grammar for the sheer pleasure of destroying the language. "Got a lot to say. When it comes to the last few years with Duke, well, you guys got it pretty well covered. Duke has been a great leader, but more than that, he's been a really good friend." Little crack to what has been a solid delivery up until now, makes Luke's throat swallow in some kind of misplaced sympathy. "We've had a great past together. But for the present and for the future, well, we wish you the best, Duke. May this decision bring you luck and happiness." Glasses and bottles get raised again, and more show up to replace the empties.

The ugly presents get passed from one hand to another until they're in front of him. The sickly sweet cake marches out of the kitchen to the tune of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," grumbled off-key except for Bo there at his side, lending harmonies right into his ear, and if they weren't in public, Luke would have to elbow him in the gut for being a show off. When the song is done, there are candles to be blown out for no other reason than that they are lit. He performs the duty even as there's some complaint about how he was supposed to make a wish first. But it's not his birthday, not anyone's birthday in the room that he knows of, and if it is, they can just get up here to the head of the table and let people make speeches about them while they get slowly drunk enough to tolerate the glaringly bright focus of attention.

There's a stalled moment while an informal poll starts up about whether he should cut the cake or open the presents first, or maybe Michelle should come back up here and relight the candles so he can get his lost wish back. He solves the problem by snatching the knife that got laid down next to the cake, handing it to Bo and commanding, "Cut," while he picks up the first present. Might not be what anyone planned, but he glances up and down the table, and his pups settle at the look – they know when to stop squabbling and obey orders. The rest of the room, if it doesn't exactly follow suit, at least gives in.

He knows he's supposed to be a good sport, which is why when he opens the first present, a Hawaiian shirt that is just as gaudy as the paper it came out of, he puts one arm into it, then the other, and musters a smile in response to the laughter and applause. There's a wolf whistle from somewhere; thankfully it comes from too far away to be Bo. It would be a shame to go to prison for being forced to kill his cousin tonight.

The next present is a loudly clashing pair of swimming trunks. "I ain't putting these on," he announces. The laughter around him doesn't get it, hasn't got the first idea that the words _not_ _ever_ get said silently in his head. But Bo knows, grins and slaps him on the shoulder in companionable amusement. Hazzard County boys have two choices when they go into the water: fully clothed or nothing at all.

His final gift is a pair of sunglasses, and the whole ensemble just goes to show how little any of the people in the room understand the choice Luke's made or where he's going. Hazzard may as well be in landlocked Montana for all that anyone there ever goes to the beach, and it's not exactly a luxurious retirement life that he's headed for. But he finds that when he dons the sunglasses and downs himself another half bottle of beer, the room is a hell of a lot easier to face. Which is a damn good thing, considering how he's getting called on to make a speech now. Bo's hand is on his shoulder again, somewhere between sympathy and encouragement as Wiggins helps to shove him to a stand.

"Y'all are about the sorriest bunch of recruits I've ever seen," he begins, gets the laugh he expects. It's how he's started the initial day of physical training for the years he's been a team leader. The first time he said it, he channeled every drill instructor he'd ever known. Shouted it at that intimidating volume and watched the boys in front of him shuffle nervously. He knew then how Uncle Jesse must have felt all those times he'd barked at his boys for their silly misdeeds. Had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing at the pale cast of their faces, at them buying into the whole tough-guy act, when all he was ever going to do was nurture them, bring them up tough and strong so he wouldn't have to worry after them when the air around them clogged up with smoke. "And these," he adds, holding up the blinding swimming trunks, oh but is own eyes are shielded so he doesn't have to blink and look away like the rest of the people in the room, "are the sorriest bunch of presents I've ever seen. But," he adds. "You've got the biggest hearts of anyone I've ever worked with, and I ain't gonna be happy to leave y'all behind."

It's not Shakespeare, but it'll do. They're all half drunk anyway, which is how it comes to pass that the cake gets lifted up off the table and stuck into a corner, all but forgotten. The clump of dining tables gets separated back into its component parts and shoved off into various corners, and somebody turns on a radio somewhere, cranks up the volume all the way past loud to settle at distorted. They're supposed to dance, probably, but a receiving line forms first, everyone coming up to congratulate him or wish him well. Rico shakes his hand and slaps his shoulder hard enough to sting, and if he were to pull off the shirts he's wearing, the skin underneath would be red. He reckons he was owed that one, doesn't take it personally, but he does point a finger at the man to make it known between them that it was a one-time thing. And his former boss is no fool; he knows that if it came down to it, Luke could plant him face first into the floor beneath them, so he smiles and moves on.

There's a fresh beer in his hand, thanks to one of the men around him, he's sure. Maybe it's a competition he's not in on, a game to figure out how much it will take to put him under the table, but no one in the room – save Bo – has the first idea. He grew up on Jesse's moonshine; beer is water to him.

Luke works his way through the well-wishers. His peers, the team leaders, men he could have enjoyed more, maybe even been friends with, had he been so inclined. Jumpers from other teams, who he has affection for, the same as neighbor widows back in Hazzard always spared one eye to look after the Duke cousins. In the end, though, it comes down to him and his boys, quiet words spoken while the room around them roars with conversation, lies and tall tales shouted just outside the radius of four men circled around him for their final instructions. About going out there and doing him proud, and any other trite words he can borrow from the wise men of his youth – baseball coaches, moonshiners and lawmen alike, and of course, his Uncle Jesse.

The space in front of him clears for a minute as beers empty, wives and girlfriends show up demanding dances, the cake gets remembered. He spots Bo then, sitting at one of the discarded tables along the wall, tipping up a bottle, watching him. Funny sight, his larger than life cousin quiet and alone, like he's trying to make those long legs of shrink up so he can keep them out of the way. His mouth isn't running, lips aren't smiling, hands aren't wrapped around someone's shoulders – and it's fifty-fifty whether it should be some pretty little filly or Luke he's holding onto, if their past nights at the Boar's Nest are any indication – while his head's thrown back in laughter. The corner is no place for Bo Duke.

"Get up here," Luke prods when he gets close enough. "And take your share of the lumps." Not that Bo can, this is a party for Luke in a part of the country where the Duke boys are neither feared nor loved, simply because they don't exist. There is no BoandLuke here, no anticipation of trouble where the two of them are found, no one looking to them to band together to save the day. This here is a place where Luke has been the only one called 'Duke' for the last fourteen years, where Bo is an interloper, a Johnny-come-lately who has come along to disrupt what the men in this room have come to know as life. He's not the golden boy of Hazzard that everyone loves and flocks around, leaving Luke to the quiet of his own thoughts.

But he's still pretty and plenty magnetic, and as soon as Luke pulls him off the wall he was trying to blend into, he's got a small crowd of the younger men around him, seeking an audience with the semi-famous NASCAR driver. Makes Luke laugh to see how Bo's energy still matches the kids in front of him, how they're drawn to be close to him without ever knowing quite why, and to watch how Bo takes so comfortably to being the center of their focus.

About the only youngster not pulled into orbit around the sunshine boy is Smitty, and that's pretty much as Luke expected. He ambles over to stand next to the runt of his litter, the one who is all determination and heart.

"Hey," the kid greets, and it's shy. Not the same boy he shared an impromptu spaghetti dinner with just over a week ago, who, even if he was not the most outgoing of the kids, at least used to be relaxed around Luke.

"Hey Smit." Too much alcohol or too much time spent with Bo, either way, he slings an arm around Smitty in the kind of open affection he's rarely shown the boy. "I've been thinking." It's the kind of opening that used to get mixed reviews when he was younger; hopeful looks from Daisy and Jesse, amusement from Cooter, a mumbled _well quit doing that _from Bo, outright scorn from Boss and Rosco. In this case it gets those earnest blue eyes to look at him with the same admiration that they always have, waiting for pearls of wisdom. "I've been thinking," he starts again, "about you and Michelle." Which isn't exactly true, shouldn't be in the past tense because he just thought of it now. But the lie is white in nature, and not told to a family member, so it slips between the cracks of Jesse Duke's rules. "And the news she ain't ready for you to tell." The kid is still a fool for looking up to him like he does; shoot, he's already miles ahead of Luke on the road to a proper and respectable life. Wife, soon to be kid, steady job and no record of felonies in his past. A genuinely good old boy like Luke has never really been. "You're going to need a place to live. Bigger than what you got." Then again, Bo seems to think it's important to let the kid think whatever he wants of Luke, regardless of what the realities are. And in truth, that approach has worked for his youngest cousin for the better part of their lives. "And I'm going to be moving out of a place that would probably suit you just fine." And Bo was also right about this – his lease does allow for a sublet. "One bedroom, but there's a closet that could converted into a room for the kid. When it's old enough to need its own room, of course. Want to come see it?"

Smitty nods. "But," he says, "you can't go telling Michelle about converting that room. Let her come to her own conclusions."

Oh, she'll love it, Luke has no doubt. "You already seen the kitchen." Because at one time or another Luke's had all of his team members over to the cabin, even if they never made it out of the public rooms toward the front. "Ain't no woman in her right senses," nor the remarkably domestic Bo Duke, "could resist it."

They stand for awhile, watching the room move around them, cells forming, expanding and contracting, reproducing into other cells as dancers stop to talk, and new couples take to the floor. They laugh when Rico tries out the Macarena to a country beat, throw their heads back and grab their stomachs as more and more of the younger guys join him. And just before they get pulled away from where they stand to join into the ridiculous game of limbo that has started up in the middle of the room, Smitty grabs his arm.

"Duke," he says. "You and Bo," and Luke figures he's going to have to make his mind up pretty quick about how much he's willing to tell this boy, because he reckons that the question's about to be asked. "You take care of each other."

They agree, right there and without words, to let it go. The kid knows they love each other. How much and in what way – doesn't matter, or Smitty's not going to pursue it. And Luke needs neither his approval nor his hatred; all he needs is for the boy to be all right with him leaving.

"Smit," he says as his cousin grabs him by the hand and starts yanking him to the middle of the room. "You ain't never got to worry about that."


	57. And The Private Party

And The Private Party

Sharing Luke, well, he's done it all his life. Dutifully, because it's always been a requirement. But never with any amount of glee, not when it's been anyone outside of their immediate circle of family and friends that he's been forced to do the sharing with. And tonight was all about lending his cousin out to young men that are virtual strangers to Bo, but are crazy with admiration for Luke. Hours and hours of being generous – because it would be unfair to assume that when he left Luke behind all those years ago, his cousin would just stay in Hazzard, making no new connections to anyone – a sense of justice compelled him to share, but he didn't have to like it.

Couple that with the beer. Endless supply of amber joy and he hadn't had a lot, but Luke had. Watching his cousin drink like he hadn't since those first few years after they lost the moonshining business, somewhere before the Carnival of Thrills and Diane. Well, there was that lapse when they were at NASCAR, but that hardly counts, because Bo was equally drunk on those nights, pretending to celebrate while drowning the loneliness that being away from Hazzard brought them.

Then there was the sweat, all those bodies close, and if Luke didn't quite give in and dance, he didn't exactly stay still, either. Gave him an extra shine, a little glow to his skin, and that one curl sticking to his forehead.

Of course, there was also that cute little _get me out of here_ look that he kept giving Bo. The man who always had a plan for every occasion, lost at sea in the middle of a crowd that had gathered just for his benefit. Looking for the door, but Bo wasn't going to aid and abet that, because there would be regrets later if he did. Not for a week or a month, maybe, but someday, Luke would be chewing over things he hadn't said or done with regard to these people he'd spent all those years working side-by-side with. Besides, watching the man tolerate attention was the kind of fun he hadn't been able to enjoy in a long time. Birthdays lost to cards sent across the country, presents and never seeing his cousin's reaction to what he sent, no chance of dragging him out to the Boar's Nest to get fussed over by their friends and neighbors. But it was there again tonight, that glare that indicated Luke was putting up with this strictly for the sake of peace and harmony in the world, and he'd do nothing close to enjoying it.

And then there were those jumper-boys, energetic and just looking for trouble in all the same places he and his cousins used to back at that same age. Buzzed, well nigh onto blitzed, and starting to wonder where the girls were (but of course the silly fools had forgotten to invite enough to go around). Letting NASCAR stories substitute for fun, pushing to hear about ones that included Luke, and Conklin getting a little too enamored of hearing how winning races ended. Beer, and fortunately the kid had already drunk plenty enough to take away part of his aim, suddenly dumped over Luke's head. Running through his hair as he grabbed the boy's arm, played nice and pretended it was funny, but made clear that there would be no beer fights tonight. Then and only then did he turn to glower at Bo like he knew the source of the problem, and it didn't matter how annoyed he tried to look, that right there was the cousin he grew up with. Untamed, rough, powerful and striking.

Which is why it's not entirely his fault that he barely made it into the cabin before pinning Luke to the wall, kisses like gulping for air after holding his breath, hands grabbing at the white dress shirt in search of that hem still tucked so carefully into those pressed black pants.

"Wait." He must be slipping, if Luke still has enough air to talk. Seems to him that when he's given this kind of kiss in the past, it's always left the other person breathless. Maybe it's just that his cousin is several times stronger than anyone he's ever used this technique on before. He redoubles his efforts, slapping one of Luke's wrists up against the wall and moving in closer. Body to body and a kiss with enough potency to take down a grizzly bear. "Bo." But Luke's not a grizzly, not even an ox – though he's easily as strong – he's just a man with more tolerance than even Cooter had back in his heaviest drinking days. "Wait—just—right there, don't go nowhere," he says, pushing up against him until he gets free. Not all the way, Bo's still got ahold of that one wrist with no intentions of letting go. Turns out there's no need to worry about it, Luke's not going any further than the half step it takes to find the bolt lock on his front door and slam it into place. He's back then, turning it around until it's Bo shoved up against the wall, the kiss picking up almost exactly where it left off.

And the one-eighty is okay, it gives him something to rest his shoulders against as he goes after that shirttail again. Manages to dig out the end of it, then run his fingers over the smooth skin just above the waist of Luke's pants. Hiss against cold fingers, or maybe it's the tickle. Whichever, it ends the kiss, gives him a chance to breathe.

Buttons, such tiny things, but this is a dress shirt, maybe the only one his cousin owns, so they have to come open one by one. "Luke," he says by way of distraction, to keep the kiss from coming back and making him forget his better nature when it comes to treating the clothing with respect. "When do we got to get up?"

Funny smirk on Luke's face then, mocking him for a lack of stamina, or maybe his wandering concentration. The kind of slight that can't be ignored, so to hell with the buttons, he goes back to exploring the skin underneath, firm stroke of hands up the rib cage and higher until there's another hiss, one that indicates a certain sensitivity that seems to be news to them both. Now that he's got control again, Bo can continue with where he left off.

"What time do we got to get up?" It's just practical, really. A calculation of how many hours their bodies have to recuperate. "When was you planning to get on the road?" Between the van they rented this morning and Luke's Jeep, they have determined they can get everything back east that Luke wants to take with him. Not much to have accumulated over fourteen years, really, barely enough to fill two relatively small vehicles. Most people need those giant moving trucks when they've been independent as long as Luke has. "We still got to load up, too."

"You reckon," Luke leans in to let his lips find that spot just below his ear that always manages to take away his better judgment. And if he succeeds, Bo won't be responsible for what happens to that dress shirt he's tried so hard to be respectful toward. "You ain't gonna be able to handle a little hard work if," another kiss, wet as a lick so that when the talking starts back up again, there's an added sensitivity to the breeze of Luke's breath, "we don't get to bed now?" Hard to believe this is the same man whose hands shook with the effort not to cause him any pain only a few days ago. Luke is ready to go, and apparently second thoughts won't be an issue tonight.

Bo lets his thumb track over that same spot that seems to be just the slightest bit tender. Doesn't quite have the effect Bo expects, it just gets him pressed more firmly into the wall by hands and hips – and Luke's after his neck again. "I was just worried about you," he explains. "What with you being older and all."

There are hands on his collar then, pulling with a steady pressure until his shirt is wide open and hanging off his shoulders. As far as he can tell, not a single button popped off, and there's no question that Luke's lips never left that particular patch of his skin. No fair that the man can do that while Bo's fingers are still constricted under Luke's half unbuttoned shirt.

Not that it matters when his hands get pulled out by the forearms, and Luke takes care of getting his own shirt open. Close now, warm, chest to chest. Luke's arms up around his shoulders and kissing him nice. No more tickle, this here feels an awful lot like love.

"Well," his answer finally comes. "We can get up whenever you want. We ain't got to leave tomorrow."

Must have been the kiss, with all its powers of intoxication. Bo's clearly achieved some sort of an altered state of consciousness, one in which he hallucinates his cousin being relaxed, not in any hurry to get out of here. Contradicts everything the man has been doing for the last several days; the packing, the balking about staying for tonight's festivities, the insistence on renting the van as soon as the Anaconda Budget Rental opened, even if they had just gotten back from Kalispell in the wee hours of the morning.

"We could stay the weekend," Luke offers, letting his left hand trail through Bo's hair. "We could take one of them hikes you been hankering after."

Bo pulls him back in for another kiss. If this is an illusion, it's a fine one, because his cousin feels like fire and tastes like beer. Everything Luke Duke has ever been made of, right there and waiting for him.

He shoves, one hand against Luke's chest while the other is busy undoing the button on his own jeans. Progress is hampered by the beer in Luke's system, of maybe it's the walking backwards that's causing trouble. Then again, it might just be the way Bo's pants are slipping down to catch at his knees. No matter, they hit the opposite wall in eight stumble-steps, but without causing each other any injuries.

He grabs Luke's wrists to pin them against the wall while he kicks his boots off, jeans still tucked inside them. Doesn't work, muscles tighten down in the body in front of him, hands pushing back against the attempt at restraint. Leaves Bo staggering back with his jeans still hooked around one leg, but his forearms get caught and held in Luke's powerful hands, keeping him on his feet. He manages to get clear of his jeans before he gets pulled forward again, strong arms wrapping around his back as the kissing starts over from about where it left off. He's ready, oh he could do this right here and standing up if the opportunity presented itself. Then again, there's a part of him that could stop right here and just hold Luke, just kiss him and let his hands wander over the skin of his back until dawn.

"I got a bed," Luke whispers into his ear when the kissing and petting slow into just the holding, heavy breathing into each other's ears.

"So you do," Bo agrees, and it's an admission. The floor was fine until it wasn't anymore. Luke's got souvenir scabs on his knees, and though it's been vehemently denied, Bo's pretty dang sure there's a floor burn on his own shoulder blades. He can't see it for himself, and he's supposed to take Luke's word for it, but there was that scraped raw feeling for the first day or two, which eventually ebbed into an itch like a scab healing over into new skin.

"I reckon," the smart one says, "we could make it there if we tried." Bo cranes his neck back out of the hold, leaning just far enough to be able to focus on that face in front of him.

"Seems like a mighty long way to me." Especially since they can't seem to manage to walk like normal people, they've limited themselves to this fumbling sort of tripping that happens when they can keep neither their hands nor their lips off each other.

"I could carry you," is the suggestion. Must be the beer, whispering in Luke's ear. "Piggyback."

It's an interesting idea, actually. One that would work better if Luke's pants came off. "You reckon," he asks, pulling at the clasp at Luke's waist. Funny little sideways slipping thing, just like the ones on all of Bo's dress pants, except this one opens backwards. He considers turning the man around right now, so he can reach around him and open his pants easily. Would provide other benefits, too, when he thinks about it, like the chance to rub up against that fine backside of his cousin's, but just when he's about to resort to that solution, the clasp comes undone. "You can handle it?"

The zipper goes the way of the clasp, and if his hand brushes against a sensitive part of Luke in the process, that's accidental. Or maybe it's on purpose; either way, he likes the way that graveled voice gets thick with heavy breath when he does it. "You ain't gained that much weight."

Pants and the shorts underneath get pushed down over those straight hips. They're still somewhere north of his knees when Luke begins the kicking process to shed both boots and clothes.

"Wait," Bo says, before he can turn around and present his back for the jumping on. Reaches up into Luke's hair – sticky mess there that's not a whole lot of fun to touch, but damn, Luke always has looked good wearing beer, and Bo's not one bit sorry for how things ended up. And caught up in those sticky strands, where Luke has forgotten he shoved them, are the sunglasses his boys gave him as a gift. Bo pulls them down over his cousin's eyes. Arched eyebrow above the frames – _really, Bo?_ it asks.

He shrugs. It's not something he'd want every night, but right now, with his mess of hair, open shirt and ready and willing attitude, yeah, he likes the look on Luke.

The attempt at piggybacking ends before they even get out of the living room and into the hallway, but that's all right. Once his feet are on the ground again, Luke grabs his hand and makes haste in dragging him into the bedroom. And when the time comes, there's no hesitation in what they do. Luke gently takes what Bo willingly gives him.


	58. Neither Brilliant Nor Foolish

Neither Brilliant Nor Foolish

In the end he is neither brilliant nor foolish, merely human. There are those drifting moments when he has a fool's thoughts about how he can keep lying here, no need to move or get up. Riding shotgun with that concept is a vague sense of nausea and the brilliant recognition that it would be hard to say that Bo took advantage of his altered state of consciousness last night when in truth, it was Luke that got all the choice parts of the event. Which means that the day will be an extension of the night, in which he has to be a good sport about things that he'd rather leave to his grumbling side. And would seem to confirm the notion of staying right where he is, because it's what Bo's hand, which rests possessively across Luke's chest even as he sleeps, wants.

A brilliant fool, but in the end it's his bladder that wins out. Can't stay where his brain requests or Bo's hand demands, because his drifting thoughts keep coalescing into dreams of a bathroom that's always right around the next corner, up one more flight of stairs, and when he finally finds it there's an interminable line of people who got there first. Jesse is probably somewhere snickering about it being cosmic revenge for the outhouse they blew up all those years ago, but it's the wrong nephew being tormented. That little incident was entirely Bo's fault and Luke was already punished by the demise of his car magazines.

Awake enough, finally, to take action, he slides out from underneath Bo's arm. Instant regret for the way he lurches to his feet when his brain shifts painfully from one side of his skull to the other. Pickled it a bit too much last night, and now it has shrunk up into a vengeful little rubber ball that bounces around of its own will. Connected to his stomach by an elastic string of mucous that brings it along for the reeling ride, and it's going to be just a fine, fine morning.

Cold air actually feels good against his clammy skin, but he can't spend the day strolling around in his altogether, so once he finds the toilet (and thankfully it manages to stay still for him instead of running off down the hallway like it did in his dreams) he also finds his robe hanging on the bathroom door. Counter-productive really, to gulp down water after having just dispelled so much from his body, but it helps to clear the cotton from his mouth. A hand through his hair to rediscover the unacceptable sticky mess there, and he reckons his stomach might just thank him for washing the stench of beer out of it. Water on his hands and he scrubs at it, but mostly succeeds in making it stand out in even more ridiculous clumps than it was before he tried this half-baked plan. A real shower is likely the only solution. Later, he can do that at some point when he feels like standing up for the time it takes to rub soap into his hair and wash it back out. Which is not right now.

Back out into the hallway, and there's Bo. Smirking like something's funny, when anyone can see that it's morning, and mornings are dead serious kinds of things. The point of no return, when the daylight enters in through all the cracks and crevices of a structure to point out how there will be no mercy for fools who had a little too much fun the night before.

"How do you feel?" and if he had the energy, he'd smack Bo for asking questions he already knows the answer to.

"Fine," he says instead, because the damage is temporary, no broken skin or fractured bones. His shrunken brain may never recover, but Bo won't hardly notice, what with how his own brain long ago atrophied from a lack of use.

A tsk, then, "You ain't fine. Come on back to bed."

He'd shake his head, but then his stomach might just flip right over, and he wouldn't be responsible for the mess. And Bo's already too loud; Luke sure as hell doesn't need to hear the man whine about cleaning up after his traitor of a stomach.

"I'm up," is all he says. "Besides, I told Smitty he could come over and take look at the place." And while the kid seems willing to walk the line of halfway acknowledging what goes on when the Duke boys turn out the lights, he doesn't need to find them snuggled up together in the same bed.

"Oh yeah?" Bo asks with a raised eyebrow, one that tries to mimic surprise. Not terribly convincing; when he doesn't know something's coming there's always that slack jawed look that comes before the rest of his face catches up to the information. This time it's much more of a smirk.

"Don't pretend like you didn't set that up," is just Luke verbalizing what he has only now figured out. He reaches out a hand to squeeze his cousin's shoulder in some kind of silent thanks. For seeing through the forest to the trees, maybe, or it could be for tolerating the untidiness of Luke's thoughts lately. Bo leans in for a kiss, and, "You don't want to do that," Luke warns.

"Yes I do," gets chirped back at him, and nobody can say he didn't warn the man. He's smart enough, at least, to keep it short. "You got a headache," he pronounces, and on another day it would be funny that Bo picks up on this by pressing their lips together. A vibration between them at a frequency only his cousin can sense.

"You see where I left them sunglasses?" Luke asks him, then has to wave his hand in the air as that forehead furrows with thought. A joke so feeble that even Bo Duke didn't think it was funny, which only goes to show how Luke needs to never consume that much beer again. Moonshine never messed with his brain or body like this.

He leads the way toward the living room, because it's entirely possible that if he doesn't make some kind of move, Bo will be willing to stand in the hallway all day. And on his feet is not exactly where Luke wants to stay. Hand scrubbing at the mess of his hair that's now not only sticky, but wet (and that's not an improvement), as he heads for the couch. Sits, closes his eyes, feels the tilt of the cushion as Bo sits next to him, too close, as always.

"We got to call Daisy before we leave," he points out. She'd rip out their hair (which is one potential solution to his current situation) if they got back to Hazzard without bothering to inform her that Luke's moving home.

"I'll do it," Bo volunteers too quickly, too loudly. Hard to say which is more annoying, but while he's never going to get the man to be quiet, he might just be able to make him see reason.

"It's fine," he answers, hand fussing at the mess on his head some more. "What's she going to do, tell me to send you out to Los Angeles again?" Probably. The girl does tend to get fixated, especially when it comes to fantasies of romance. "I'll just tell her you're too stubborn to listen to me."

"Look who's talking," Bo answers, taking hold of his hand where it's still trying to unstick clumps of hair from one another. "You're only making it worse," he gets informed.

Nods, leans his head against the back of the couch, rests his eyes.

The next time he's aware of his surroundings, there's a cup of coffee waving in the air in front of his nose. No idea how long he was out, but somewhere between the unplanned nap and the gift Bo's offering him now, he feels a hell of a lot better. Mostly, anyway. It would help if he had the first idea how long his little snooze lasted. Sun glare out the windows is no help; they face west.

"You didn't call her, did you?" Daisy, their slip of a cousin from whom Bo sees some need to protect him.

"Good morning to you, too," is the answer, full of forced cheer. He takes the mug out of Bo's hand, but doesn't sip at it or even look away from those dark blue eyes. He knows when a subject is being avoided.

Bo sighs at his obstinacy. "I ain't done nothing. Except make you some coffee." And Luke's grateful for that. He really is, and means to say so, but there's a follow up sentence. "And I had some scrambled eggs. You want some?"

In all his life he has never pegged Bo for cruelty, but offering eggs to a man whose last meal was made up of entirely too much malt and hops reveals a hidden dark side.

"Toast," he says, then grabs Bo's hand when it looks like he's in a hurry to go and make some. Pulls his cousin down to sit next to him. "Later," he adds.

Funny how a hand comes over to feel his forehead; funnier how he lets it happen despite the ridiculousness of the gesture. He reckons his hangover reads exactly ninety-eight point six. Maybe a little warmer, now that he's drinking down his pleasantly hot coffee.

"When is Smitty supposed to come?"

He shrugs an answer as he swallows some more of that black gold. He's always had an open door policy as far as his boys go. _If you need me, I'm here_ sort of a thing that he's never regretted and they've never abused. But then, it's always been only himself that such a policy could inconvenience. "What time is it?"

Not that Bo wears a watch or ever has. "Early," comes the answer.

"He won't be up yet, then." The kid matched him pretty well beer-for-beer last night, and he's never had anything like the tolerance of a Duke. "I'll call him in a couple of hours and set a time. We should call Daisy now, though."

"Finish your coffee first," is the suggestion, so he takes one more sip before putting the mug down onto the end table. Lays his head on Bo's shoulder because it's more comfortable than the back of the couch, and rests his eyes some more.


	59. More Dangerous Than a ThirtyTwo Car Jump

Quick note for Cky - I'm afraid I am doomed to let you down. The story is already written, it's just getting posted one section at a time. Also, Luke loves Bo more than he loves himself. He would rather hurt himself than abuse Bo. He might have moments here and there of being a jealous jerk, but he'd never deliberately cause his cousin pain. I figured it was only fair to be straight up with you about where this story is, and is not, going.

Now back to the story.

* * *

More Dangerous Than a Thirty-Two Car Jump

So much for the hike he was promised. The morning disappears behind the naps Luke's not taking (which is why Bo doesn't bother to wake him up, because he is most clearly _not_ sleeping – Jesse would be so proud to know that his oldest nephew is well on his way to being every bit as contrary and cantankerous as their guardian ever was about such things) interrupted by a shower (and Bo has no complaint about that stale beer smell getting washed out of Luke's hair), making arrangements for Smitty to come in the afternoon, and a phone call to Daisy.

That last thing right there is more dangerous than a thirty-two car jump, mainly for Luke's insistence that not only must she be telephoned now, but that he will be the one to make the call. Seems to start out fine, with squealing glee coming through the handset and audible in the next room when Luke announces that he's coming back to Georgia to stay. Of course, the sound might be amplified by the echo the cabin has taken on. For all that the place seemed sparse when Bo first walked through the door, it's become apparent that Luke did make it his own for all those years. Now that the walls are genuinely bare (save the framed photos of family that Luke won't let him take down until the morning they leave, and then they are to be immediately wrapped in blankets and placed in the back seat of the Jeep for safe travel) he can see what it must have looked like before his cousin settled in here.

Makes it hard to mind his raising and not eavesdrop on the conversation taking place in that little space that used to be an office. Then again, it's just Luke and Daisy, whose childhood secrets slipped always through the walls of the old farmhouse like wind through the trees; the Duke kids never have been able to keep secrets from each other.

"No, we ain't." The tone of Luke's voice changes on that one, ticks over toward tired. "I rented a van, and we ain't putting no extra mileage on it." Of course they aren't, just like they won't waste any money on decent food or a bed for the night. Road trip rules as written by one Luke Duke. "You need to get your geography straight, girl," tries to be a joke, but it's not. Daisy's sticking her hand through the fence to pet what she thinks is a tame little puppy of a secret; he reckons it would be a real bad thing to let her fingers get bitten off by the Doberman that lurks within. He's already off the couch and one step closer to the phone when the next words come. "If he ain't interested, it ain't my place – nor yours – to try to change his mind. Just leave it be." But apparently she doesn't. "Talk to him then," comes out in a sigh, followed by "love you, too."

It's always interesting to watch how Luke goes quiet when he wants to yell, how he gets gentle to fend off the temptation toward violence. The phone gets laid down just as carefully as if it were made of glass.

"Your cousin wants to talk to you," Luke says as he walks past.

Bo wants to say _I told you so_, wants to reach out an arm, sling it around Luke's neck and pull him close enough to provide some comfort, but he does neither. He reckons he doesn't need to unleash that anger that's building in the man right this minute. His eye stands a lot less chance of being blackened if he just goes and handles Daisy like he wanted to in the first place.

"Hey sweetheart," he chirps into the handset, even as he listens to his other cousin banging around the kitchen. Packing up the room they left for last, apparently, which is really distracting. He wants to drop the phone now, march out there and remind Luke how they've still got a good six meals left before they leave and it's going to be dang hard to make them halfway decent without the pots and pans that are currently getting stacked in preparation to be boxed. "How's school?"

"We're on spring break." Well, that puts an abrupt end to his attempts at redirecting her attentions. "It was real nice of you to help Luke out while he's moving, honey. Real sweet." Shoot, the girl doesn't know the half of how sweet he's been about it all. "How come you didn't tell me that was what you was doing in the first place?"

Girl doesn't like secrets. Which is likely to lead to frying-pan shaped knots on his and Luke's skulls when they get around to telling her the whole truth.

"I didn't know for sure. Took him awhile to make up his mind." Which seemed like torture at the time, but then Bo hadn't had more than an inkling of what was going through Luke's mind then. Which isn't a new state of affairs, but it's one that's going to have to change, now that they're more than cousins. "About Gabriela," he says, because there's no point in pretending that this conversation is going anywhere else. And he did promise Luke he'd make Daisy stop putting him in the middle of it. Tough guy – who is in there making a mess of his own kitchen – might have rejected the promise but that doesn't make it any less valid. "If you got something to say about her, talk to me, not Luke."

"Well, all right, sugar," said just as sweet as the confectionary whose name she has just invoked. "I think you should go out there. You done already helped Luke pack. You ain't got to drive back with him. You could—"

"Yes I do," he interrupts. "We got the van and the Jeep both loaded up, got to drive them both back east. Besides, I ain't going to go leading Gabby on about what ain't gonna happen, and I don't want you to do that neither." Because he reckons that, just like women always do, his cousin and his former girlfriend have been colluding. Romantic fantasies, and he should go easy on the dreamer on the other end of the phone line.

"I just don't think you should be walking away from that kind of love." They're almost the same words Luke said to him back in Los Angeles about the very same girl. Except they end in _that kind of love_. Like Daisy already knows, is already judging him and Luke. Like she's telling him that Gabriela's love is the right kind and Luke's is wrong.

"Just drop it," he snaps. Should go easy on her, but he can only go easy on one of his kin at a time, and he's used up just about all his patience on Luke over the past couple of weeks.

"All right, sugar." She's hurt, and now he's got to spend some time soothing over those injuries he's inflicted, and that's only half his work. After that, he's got to head off to the kitchen and settle Luke down.

— — — —

"Aint no point in worrying about it until we see her," Luke's telling him, but those are not words of wisdom. More like the approach of a man that is used to pulling rank and getting his way with just a look. And Daisy, bless her heart, has never been particularly concerned by either Luke's seniority or the intensity of his eyes. Bo reckons it would be a heck of a lot smarter for that overactive brain of his cousin's to be coming up with one of his infamous plans.

So much, once again, for the hike he was promised; it's well into the afternoon now, and he and Luke sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the porch swing, waiting for Smitty. Not a nice afternoon, cloudy with a dry cold the likes of which the southeast never gets. But Luke is close and warm, his left hand resting overtop of Bo's, fingers nestled between his in a way that refutes any notion that the touch is accidental.

"The way I figure it, she's probably picked up some new moves by chasing L.D. around." With an iron pan or a wire whisk or a plastic spatula. Hardly matters, the girl can make anything hurt. "We best get in shape."

Luke's thumb strokes up the side of his hand. Maybe it's some sort of apology for the way he let Daisy get under his skin even though he swore he wouldn't, the quiet tension that he let set in between them until Bo fed him lunch. And a second, smaller apology for the fact that Bo had to go digging into a box for the pot to make it in. A compromise has been reached since, about how they can leave some of the kitchen utensils behind for Smitty's wife, who is apparently a fine cook, to use. The rest got packed up and Bo's just going to have to confine his cooking to dishes that can be made in what's left.

Luke tips his head back to look down his nose at him. Silly smirk there. "What kind of exercises are you proposing to help us get in shape?"

Well, he'd like to answer that, but there's the sound of a car engine, followed by the crunch of gravel. Red pickup coming up the driveway, so he's restricted to waggling his eyebrows in suggestion. Expects a skeptical look, anticipates Luke sliding away from him or standing up to put some distance between them. But other than lifting his right hand in greeting to the newcomers, his cousin doesn't seem in too big of a hurry to move. So Bo just stays where he is, close and warm.


	60. Hands

Hands

Funny how he's never paid any real attention to hands, his own or Bo's. Oh, he's been aware of the weight and heat of Bo's arm as it drapes across his shoulders with only the tiniest of excuses to do so. But their hands, beyond dealing with nicks and blisters, have never been of any concern to him.

Most of today has been about feet, anyway. Hours spent on them, watching to see the moment when Bo's gait becomes uneven. It's the silent signal he waits for, the unequivocal indication that it's time to rest for awhile. Keeping tabs on whether his cousin pulls off a boot to run a finger lightly over his heel. He'll know then, whether to offer that band aid he's got stashed away in his pocket, or just to settle down somewhere and wait for that charley-horse that has formed in a too-long calf muscle to ease up.

But the day is too fresh and perfect for that kind of mishap. Pale blue sky overhead streaked with feathered clouds, dry and comparatively warm. Even Bo, after the sun's arc has risen above the horizon into a position that looks an awful lot like ten o'clock to him, starts pulling off layers. The flannel shirt that was once Luke's but might as well belong to Bo now, the sweatshirt underneath, and before noon, the button down shirt that represents the last of the clothing on his cousin's top half, gets tied around his waist with the others.

They're walking the rim of a ridge that rings Silica Creek, providing views of both Anaconda and Opportunity. It's a place Luke has come often, anytime that the fire risk is sufficiently low that he can afford to leave his phone and beeper behind, and waste the day far enough from his Jeep that he couldn't respond quickly to an emergency if there was one. A favorite destination, which the Marine that lurks inside him recognized right away as a terrific defensive position. Height, clear views on all sides, and if anyone else even ventured up here, he'd see them well in advance.

The perfect space, when it comes right down to it, for relaxing.

Bo picks himself a flat rock to stretch out on, long body like a lizard bathing in the spring sun. Lunch, sandwiches that Bo insisted on making before they left ("So you won't go making me eat peanut butter and jelly," was the explanation), is the obvious purpose for the rest, but Bo's usually ravenous stomach is pulled taut there between his rib cage and hipbones, showing no signs of worrying after roast beef on white.

It's then that Luke makes his first discovery of the day about hands. Nothing more than the knuckle of his right index finger, sliding feather-light down the centerline of that belly, and he watches how muscles contract under his touch, listens to the gleeful giggle that gets released as counterpoint to the tension. Such a little thing, barely grazing against Bo's skin, and it holds more power, more sway over his cousin than any of the firm grips he's used to lift the man back to his feet after a fall.

And when Bo sits up to take the nourishment his body's going to need for the rest of this journey, Luke can't help but marvel at how the lightness of one knuckle brushing against sweaty skin is so much more persuasive than the time he balled that same hand into a fist, doled out a roundhouse punch to a proudly jutted chin as punishment for choosing Diane Benson over him.

"I love you," he blurts out too fast, stupid thing to say to a man that's got bread crumbs on his lips, and a tongue lapping out to catch the smear of mayonnaise down his palm. Tries to shake the memory of the words right out of the air between them, but Bo just smiles, showing more food caught between his teeth.

"I know," he answers. Of course he does, he always has. It's like the cycle of night into morning – Bo expects to be loved. And expects to eat well, so he turns his attentions back to his sandwich.

Another boulder, other side of the ridge in the late afternoon. They're fools to rest here when the sun's endurance has just about run its course, but it's a farewell trip over trails that have been his solace in times of loneliness and loss, and he reckons a few extra minutes is not too much for this ridge to ask of him.

More hands, this time Bo's. Arms wrapped around him from behind, fingers clenching to his biceps. Familiar feel, the same kind of thing his cousin has always done when words are about to be said that he figures Luke might not like, though it used to be a single hand gripping his shoulder. A lot more intimate now, more confining; blonde logic imagining really thinks it's possible to hold Luke still if he wants to move.

"What?" he asks finally. Because his human straight jacket is a little too warm and sweaty to be tolerated all night.

A kiss close to his ear, supposed to be calming, but it's just more time wasted when clearly the man's got something to say. "Smitty's a great kid."

Luke shrugs. They've had this conversation before, it seems. About how Bo likes Marks, thinks Smitty's a good kid, finds Conklin hilarious. No real opinion's been offered on Wiggins; saying something about him, at least, would constitute presenting new information.

"Level-headed for such a young guy." Yeah, they spent the better part of the afternoon together yesterday, first in showing the cabin to the young Smith couple, then in taking the shelves off the walls of what had always been Luke's storage closet, so they could see how it looked as a nursery. It passed the Michelle test; the cabin's got new tenants ready to take over the lease come May first.

"Comes with the territory, I guess." Because a jumper can't go panicking when there's nothing between him and a forest fire except a few trees and dry wisps of grass.

"The territory." Bo laughs, rolling mirth that gets conducted right into Luke's back. He turns his head, but even with his pupils as far into the corners of his eyes as they'll go, he can't see anything. Bo's got him held too close. "He wasn't born fighting fires. It ain't the territory, it's the training." Sure, he's getting a lecture on smoke-jumpers from the NASCAR driver. "It's you, Luke. You done a fine job with all of them."

He'd talk about the disposition it takes, and how many kids don't make it through the initial training season. He's lost his share to physical and mental weakness, to a need to buck against the system. He'd tell Bo how it's got nothing much to do with him, really, but those hands are stroking against his arms, pent up worry expressing itself in the twitches on fingers. This discussion, like so many Hazzard interactions, is not about what it seems. So he waits for it.

"You ever think about," a sigh, words getting hitched up on nothing at all. When they're disentangled, Bo tries again. "Do you want kids, Luke?"

He'd laugh if it were funny. It almost is, comes close to sounding like an offer of the impossible from the man who never has let limitations like gravity hold him down to earth. Why should pregnancy be any different?

But the tone of the question comes closer to fear, bordering on heartbreak, than humor.

There was a time, more than twenty years ago now, when all of Hazzard – save Bo, because even then they catalogued each other's every move when it came to girls – figured him to have fathered at least a few of the unwanted kids Hazzard's orphanage. And at that time, he'd wanted nothing to do with being anyone's father. He felt bad for the girls who'd wanted to blame him, and for the children who didn't have homes, but they weren't his and he sure as hell didn't need any little lives depending on him.

And that, right there, might mark the end of any conversations he's ever had with Bo on the subject of children.

"Jesse wanted me to have them." Oh sure, the old man always said Daisy was the only hope for the family line, but she couldn't have passed on the Duke name. Only he or Bo could have done that, and no one ever expected that kind of responsibility out of pretty-boy. Left it, as always, up to Luke to get accomplished. "I reckon I like them well enough." Not like Bo, who never did figure out how to be anything but the youngest person in any given room.

Kids. With his luck he'd have a handful of girls, blonde as Bo, long-legged as Daisy, and he'd wind up in prison for maiming all the young boys in town. Shooting rock salt out of a pellet gun isn't quite as legal as it used to be, and the court system has lost its sense of humor about such things.

But yeah, he might have enjoyed raising them up until that point. Tolerating their sassy little mouths because if they were his kids, at least their comments would be smart. Forcing them to do homework, but rewarding its completion with pickup games of football (because even if they were girls, if they were his they'd be tough), wiping their noses when they were sick, wrapping his arms around them when they were cold. Bringing them to visit Aunt Daisy so they could be properly spoiled, then off to Uncle Bo's to—

Fantasy, pleasant as it is, ends right there, with the notion of Uncle Bo. Because he can't imagine beyond the idea of the drive to get there. What would Bo do with his kids, what would he say, would he be every bit as awkward with Luke's baby girls as he has always been with every other child? Somewhere between fear and dread at having to be more grown up than they are, at having to take some responsibility? Would he threaten to whip their tails or wash out their mouths with soap for saying things he didn't expect or appreciate? Luke's kids would make Bo as miserable as any ever had, he expects. So—

"If I'd wanted kids, I reckon I would have gone ahead and had some," he answers. Because Bo's not imagining long-legged blonde nieces, he's got no mental image at all of what kind of life Luke might have led. He's just making sure that the choice has already been made, that Luke's not going to change his mind in a week or a month or a year. "I reckon I'm happy enough without them."

The hands change then, loosen up enough for Bo to crane his neck to the side where Luke can see him. Assessing look, just like Jesse used to do when he was trying to figure out whether he was being told the whole truth. Bo must like what he sees, because one of those hands makes it up to his face then, long fingers turning his face and tipping his chin for a sweet little kiss. Tentative, gentle, like it's trying to make up for the loss of little girls that Luke will never get to raise. But they don't have enough light left on this mountainside for Bo to kiss a whole alternate life away into the same oblivion it just came out of.

"Come on," he says. "We still got a ways to go."

And on the way down off the ridge, there's one last discovery that he makes about their hands. How Bo's reaches for his, hesitant, wiggling. How it's hard to find his way in the dark when there's the distraction of Bo's worry held right there in his palm. How his own firm grip and stroking thumb can settle that twitching down to stillness, but it's not easy. Takes time and then there's the effort he has to put into patience, not dropping the hand and snapping at Bo to just calm down and let him think. And when the trail leads them right back to where he left the Jeep, when the time comes that he needs to fish out the keys and drive them home, despite the obvious logical conclusion that he needs two hands if he's ever going to get the car started, he learns that he doesn't want to let Bo's hand go.


	61. Beginning of the Journey

Beginning of the Journey

Two-way radios stand in for the CB of their youth, which was in itself a poor substitute for being together. Yellow squawk-box jammed into what's meant to be a cup holder, and the gaps in what it can pick up are wider than the Mississippi.

"Don't get more than a half mile away from me," is Luke's solution to the problem, and it's why Bo got relegated to the van. As if this old rattle and clunk of a tin-can rental couldn't be driven at Bo Duke speeds with the right kind of sweet talk and flattery. He remembers now, back when the national speed limits got lifted and he heard about the fact that Montana figured it could do without having one at all, how he decided that maybe Luke had moved to the right place after all. His time in this state has been disappointing with regard to that; so far he hasn't seen any kind of major road without posted limits. But they don't seem to be imposed.

"Lost Sheep One," he complains, because Luke has dropped out of sight again. "Where are you?" Not that it matters a whole lot. They both know where they're going, have already picked out their stopping point for the night. And if Luke happens to be carrying the fixings for their lunch, Bo's got plenty of money in his wallet to buy something better than peanut butter anyway.

"I'll be along directly." But it's just better to stick together. Dukes need to look out for Dukes – one of the lessons learned at the knee of Hazzard's top moonshiner. True to his word, Luke's zipping up from behind to take the lead. "Had to make a pit stop."

He wonders what in Luke's load shifted this time. First it was the framed photos, grating against each other on the back seat (because Bo hadn't snugged the blanket wrapped around them tight enough) then it was the dishes clattering (because there wasn't enough newspaper between them, which was also somehow Bo's fault though Luke packed them) and the stop after that had been about making sure, all over again, that the computer was safely stowed under the back seat.

There have been no concerns thus far about the van's contents, but then he knew there wouldn't be. Clothing, sheets, books, the desk from his office – it's dang hard to break any of those things, and this is why they have been entrusted to Bo, no doubt.

They race some, play hide and seek around clusters of trucks (but always with great care and at a respectful distance, because they learned long ago a certain brotherhood with others who made their living on the road), calibrate their stops according to loneliness rather than need. Or, well, that's how Bo sees it. Luke would likely argue that he just plain likes rest areas, with their choking fumes, half-dead trees and toilets about the same caliber as of military latrines.

Which makes it well nigh onto dark when they hit their campsite of choice, back in the Black Hills. Bo's first act is to scan the area for young mothers with wanton children; he figures on going back to the ranger station and getting assigned to a different site if there are any nosy neighbors. But the spring break season seems to have passed, because the place is not half as full as it was only a couple of weeks ago. Luke sets up the tent almost effortlessly, thanks to the brilliance of having two working poles. It's annoying, really, how easily the task goes, especially when Luke decides to point out to him how long it took him to set up this exact tent on this very same spot.

Downright irritating what a smug bastard Luke can be, which is why Bo follows him down to the creek, then waits until he squats low with some intention of filling his canteen. Watches until he reckons the whole of his cousin's attention is focused on the chore at hand, then makes his move.

But he's always been a fool. Luke Duke is like a deer at the watering hole, never letting his guard down, all senses at alert. Even seems like, somewhere after the point where so much of his body's weight is committed to forward momentum that there's no turning back, he even sees his cousin's ear swivel to catch the sound of his approach. Optical illusion, caused by all the movement suddenly there in front of him. Luke standing, sidestepping, arms out to catch him. No, not so much catch as shove, and from there it's all sensation, cold, hard, wet, damn it, Luke's the one that's supposed to have crash-landed into the creek. Hair in his eyes when he turns back to look over his shoulder, has to push it back, sloppy slash of water into his face from his wet sleeve. Sits down right where he hit the creek bottom to glower at Luke.

He expects arms-folded-across-chest, superior laughter. Knows that will be followed by careful timing, waiting until Bo's almost found his feet, then bounding off like a doe into the woods: just a flash of white tail, then gone. And the head-tipped guffaw doesn't let him down one bit; aside from the dark shadowing of his beard, this could be a twenty-two-year-old version of his cousin. But predictable behavior stops when Luke comes toward him, not away, voluntarily joining him in the creek. They tussle and shove, pull and drag each other into the darkest section, where the overhanging maple tree blocks the moonlight and the current is gentle. They wrestle there, where it's deep enough to dunk each other without harm, and when the water fills his ears and shuts his eyes, when there is nothing to smell and no taste other than the slightly coppery flavor of untreated water, all around him is the feel of Luke. Kissing, touching, rub and grind. Rough play turns quiet after a while, him clinging close to Luke and testing out the depth necessary for him to be able to wrap both legs around that muscled body and allow the water to do the lion's share of holding him up. Arms loose around Luke's neck; there are no children calling to them from the shore now.

"You're cold," Luke announces, and there's no refuting the fact that he's trying with a mighty desperation to soak up all the warmth in the body that he's wrapped around, but the icy creek water is in the way. If there were enough light Luke would likely assert that his lips were blue. "Come on, let's get you warm."

Sitting in long underwear and sweats next to a freshly built fire while their wet clothes drip dry on the tree branches overhead is not his first choice of methods for warming up, but it is Luke's.

"Besides," his cousin points out. "We ain't in these woods alone." If his teeth weren't still setting a rhythm with their pathetic and completely uninvited clacking, he might have finished that sentence in unison with Luke. "Hand me that peanut butter." Which, for reasons that never get discussed (could be sheer laziness) they agree to eat straight out of the jar.

Somewhere after the container is empty and his teeth settle back down out of that irritating chatter, when the fire burns low and the tiny leaves just popping out on the trees whisper promises of a peaceful night, they crawl into the tent. Luke doesn't complain of crowded woods or hot bodies, he just lets Bo settle on his chest, sliding one hand into the hair at the back of his head with his thumb making lazy strokes just behind his ear, until he falls asleep.

The next afternoon, rain catches up with them after they've turned south. Omaha parallels them to the west when the skies pick up mean streaks of gray-green that are just aching for a fight. Flashes of lightning windblown trash from the side of the road taking flight, when he reaches for the two-way radio.

"Uh, Lukas," he calls, forgetting C.B. protocol for the moment. "Maybe we should turn back." North of here the skies may have been cloudy, but they weren't promising anything like the violence that is offered down here.

"It ain't nothing we can avoid," comes the answer. Luke's become the master of western weather patterns, so even if he does consider arguing his point about how things didn't look as gloomy up north, Bo gives in without a fight. "How you holding up against the wind?"

With its high profile, the van's not exactly a pleasure to drive through these gusts, fighting as it is to shift lanes without bothering to consult Bo, but he's a professional driver. He can keep his car on the road.

"Just fine," comes out sounding exactly like pride.

"The Jeep ain't liking it," is Luke's response, making him feel the fool. "I figure we can push on past Omaha and then we'd better find us a place to stay the night."

Which turns out to be an ugly, cinderblock chain motel, Super 8 or Hotel 6, Bo can never bother to keep them straight. The kinds of places NASCAR convoys always drive right past on their way to scrubbed clean, vast expanses of hotels, where they can take over a floor and there's a weight room and indoor pool downstairs that he always aspires to make good use of, but somehow ends up in the restaurant/bar instead.

Heavy rain falls as soon as they get inside, wind blowing it sideways. They decide against going back out for their duffle bags or what's left of the food they packed. "We're gonna have to find a restaurant anyways," Luke concedes. "Ain't got enough to feed us both." Not after they ate all the peanut butter last night, that is. Now, if only they'd brought Cheese Doodles, they might have some options, but Luke had stuck his nose right up into the air at the notion.

Later, they'll find that restaurant. When the weather settles to something closer to tolerable. For now they're stuck walking down dingy, narrow hallways in search of their room. And once they get into the small square of a space, somehow reminiscent of a hospital, they have nothing left to do. Bo considers turning on the television, but Luke must know what he's thinking. There's a scowl on his face.

Two Duke boys in a cramped corner with no place else to go.

"At least," he says, lying back on one of the two queen beds there, scratchy bedspread rubbing against his skin where his hands are clasped behind his head. "This'll give us one more day to rest before we got to unload at the other end."

Luke's heart just wrenches at the thought of him having to work so hard. It's plainly written in that look over his shoulder as he goes over to the window. Pulling and tugging on the ugly plastic curtain in some attempt to make the room even gloomier that it already is.

"Most of what I got ain't even heavy," constitutes his dismissal of Bo's tired back. "Just some books." A virtual encyclopedia set of weather manuals and code books, not to mention maps. "I bet getting your stuff out of Atlanta is worse."

Maybe. He actually owns his furniture. Got himself matching couch and love seat, both facing an oversized television set. "We could just take your stuff to my place and live there." Not such a terrible idea, really. It's only a couple of hours from the farm, and only a few blocks from the Georgia Dome. He and Luke can catch football games and—

The window's been abandoned, as has that silly face that mocked him a few seconds ago.

"Is that what you was figuring, Bo?" Anger, scorn, he's got a lifetime of knowing the way Luke wears his emotions. Still, he hasn't had a flip this abrupt directed at him since the short-tempered days of his cousin's pre-Marines youth. "That I'd quit my job and leave my home, just so's I could come and watch you keep both of yours? You figured to come help me move out of my life and into yours?"

Yes, that was the goal. Atlanta or Hazzard, Bo wanted Luke in his life. "I ain't had any one plan, Luke," he answers, and it could be explaining. Would be, if he could stay prone on the bed, if he wasn't standing now, jutting his chin. Two of them caged like Dukes should never be, one square of a hotel room shared between them. "Mostly I figured you was miserable in Montana." All right, at the time he'd had no idea what it was that Luke would be giving up to come home. Hadn't seen his cabin nor met any of his co-workers. Didn't know the bonds he'd formed, but whose fault was that, really? It wasn't him that kept so dang much to himself. "I ain't set on anything. It was just a thought."

"Just a thought." Head shaking disbelief, as if he weren't a Duke, compelled by blood to telling the truth. "Since when you been having this thought, Bo? And when was you going to get around to telling me?"

"Now?" answers both questions, really.

A hand waves through the air at him. "Fine," looks an awful lot like Luke going passive on him, oh, but it's not. It's a man making allowances for his baby cousin, giving all the appearance of making a giant sacrifice. The sweet old Hazzard widows of their youth would be so proud of Luke's selflessness – but Bo's not.

Whine of a truck in low gear, straining to pass on a too-close interstate, makes these four walls close in that much tighter around them.

"Dang, it Luke," he snaps. "I ain't had the thought for more than the time it took to say it."

Nasty little smirk there on his cousin's face, one that acknowledges just how little time he figures Bo dedicates to thinking. Ought to be reaffirming, and maybe Luke even means it that way, but it's snide and superior and Bo's just about had enough.

"I don't care where we live. Atlanta, Hazzard, don't matter." Hand through his hair, trying to keep his head clear. Somehow he always gets tripped up on his own words when it comes to Luke. "You got any great suggestions, Luke? You got anything you _want_ to do? Seems like all you ever do is point out how stupid my ideas are."

He doesn't want to be having this fight. Except that he really does, wants to push and shove at Luke, back him into a corner until he gets some truth out of him.

"What do you want me to say, Bo? You want to live in Atlanta, we'll live in Atlanta. You want to stay on the circuit, fine. I'm agreeing with you, how can that be calling you stupid?"

With his face, that's how. The press of lips, the roll of eyes, hands on hips, head tipped back. His mouth is agreeing while the rest of him points out exactly how big of an idiot Bo really is.

And this right here is not an argument over potatoes.

"I'm tired," of this argument, really, but he's got to find their way through it. Luke, their usual navigator, has abdicated, leaving him to provide both direction and momentum for this little disagreement. "Of doing nothing, Luke. We spent two weeks doing nothing much more than sitting around watching the days pass when we was in Montana. What do you figure we'll do with ourselves in Hazzard? You think it's gonna be road chases and outsmarting the law? Hell, Boss is gone, and Rosco never did have two brain cells to rub together. I ain't opposed to going back to Hazzard, but not if we're just gonna sit there and watch each other's hair grow." He's on a roll now, no idea whether he's making sense anymore. If Luke's little turn to the side there is any indication, the tension creeping up his neck into his jaw, Bo must be hitting some nerve or other. "I'm tired of you acting like it's some great big sacrifice to be with me. You ain't the only one making sacrifices here." After all, Bo's given up his sanity. "I'm tired of being careful what I say to you, Luke. I'm tired of worrying about you."

The look Luke gives him then is dark, his eyes hiding in the shadows created by those heavily lowered eyebrows. Looks like a turtle, caught halfway between retreat and aggression. "You ain't got to worry about me, Bo." Rough, with every attempt to sound authoritative, like a team leader commanding a pack of young boys through dangerous territory. But Bo's not twenty any more, doesn't look up to Luke quite so adamantly, doesn't demand perfection out of the man. He can hear through the toughness to the vulnerability underneath.

Somewhere tangled into all those lessons of Jesse's about not casting the first stone, there was a subtext. The kind of thing that was probably aimed more at Luke than him, but it was always funny how the arrows of their uncle's lessons went astray. This one was mostly about how it wasn't fair to make fun of people for what they didn't know, or for things they could never understand. Like not taking advantage of city-slickers in their greed, because they'd never been taught right from wrong in the first place.

So while he'd like to laugh at the idiocy of his cousin, who still hasn't learned that Dukes take care of Dukes no matter their relative ages, he doesn't.

"Of course, I got to worry about you, Luke." _Especially when you aren't taking care of yourself. _The wind outside picks up, rain slaps against the outside of their hotel window. Two Duke men caught inside, no place to get away from each other, and truth spilling out of every corner. Messy stuff, the kind of thing that could leave a stain the likes of which even Daisy couldn't wash away. But the Duke boys have called crawling directly under the stream of a leaking oil pan fun, they've swum in mud just because it was there. So Bo pushes Luke right into the middle of all that sloppy truth, then follows after him into the mess. "I'll always worry about you. I love you."


	62. Bumps in the Road

Bumps in the Road

He doesn't want to be here, doesn't want to have this argument. Doesn't want the tangled smells of bleach and sickly sweet air-freshener getting sucked up into his nose as he forces himself to breathe slow and easy. Doesn't want the sound of car doors slamming as more half-drowned road-trippers come looking for asylum in this same square of concrete blocks.

He tries to get out of it all by closing his eyes, but it's still there, and right in the middle of it all is Bo. Warm hand on his face, uninvited, and he has the urge to shake it off. But if he does, it'll just leave Bo to _worry_ about him.

"You ain't got to worry about me," he repeats, opening his eyes to find his cousin too close. Wrinkles on his forehead, and by damn, the man's telling the truth. He's been worrying. "Because I'm fine."

"Fine," Bo informs him, "ain't moping around all the time."

"I ain't been moping." What a ridiculous notion that is. Moping was what Daisy did every time she marched right out and got her heart broke. Some kind of destructive vengeance with which she went after getting herself hurt, followed by flashes of anger, then finally, day-in-day-out of moping. Until the next time some pretty-boy with "wrong" all but stamped onto his forehead made his way to Hazzard and got the whole cycle started up again.

"Fine," is Bo ignoring him. Hand still on his cheek, and he still doesn't want it there, holding him firm, eye-to-eye. "Ain't suddenly hollering over nothing, then acting like it ain't no big deal after all."

"It ain't no big deal." He's sorry he snapped at Bo about it, really. He'd say so if he thought it would make this intense scrutiny of him stop.

"Do you want to live in Atlanta, Luke?"

"It don't matter none."

"Luke," and that hand's not going anywhere, it's clenching down on his chin, gripping like Aunt Lavinia's used to. _Tell me the truth, boy. Did you make your cousin cry?_ Which wasn't fair, really. Back then it was a lot harder to _keep_ Bo from crying than it was to get him started. "Do you want to live in Atlanta?"

"No," he growls, means to have better control. They're too close together for all the vehemence in him to get expressed. Someone could get hurt that way.

"All right. That's all you had to say." His chin is freed from that death grip.

And now that the pressure's gone, a tide of brackish guilt washes over him. "You would have moved to Montana if I wanted you to." The first time he offered could have been dismissed, but the proposition kept getting made, over and over. _Do you want to stay? I'll stay with you._ Bo meant it.

"If you wanted me to, but you didn't. Because I was cold and bored and lonely, you didn't ask me to stay. Even if I would have gotten used to the weather, and even if I wouldn't have been lonely for any longer then it took me to get to know some people. Besides, I ain't got no particular interest in staying in Atlanta. Luke," his voice gets interrupted by a siren outside. Funny how, even if they both instantly know it's got nothing to do with them, both of their heads turn toward the sound. Breath shortens in preparation for a mad sprint that has no real cause to happen. Besides, the General's a good thousand miles east of here, and he figures Bo would get winded after the first thousand feet. And he can't swear _he'd_ make it a whole lot further than that. "You sure you want to go back to Hazzard?"

He reckons that's not where that sentence originally intended to go. But it's a good enough place, makes them smirk at each other over memories of days that stretched off into forever. Hard to imagine how they could ever have slipped away, endless as they seemed at the time.

"Lukas." One syllable, the difference between what he's gotten called most of the days of his life, and his formal first name. Bo always uses it with affection, even if that extra little beat sometimes makes it heavy, a dead weight there between them. "I know you ain't been happy in a long time. Oh," hands come up to stay his objections before they can even be made. "You had some good times, maybe, with them boys of yours. Bowling." Stupid grin there to mock everything about the notion, and Bo hasn't got the first idea how many fond memories he's stirred up with just those words. Nothing quite so sepia-tinged as running from Rosco through the twists of old country roads, but good times all the same, with boys half his age. Luke makes a silent vow to get his cousin out on the alley, if only to prove that the game actually does take some skill. "But you ain't acted happy since sometime before Uncle Jesse died."

Long hands on his shoulders, pink face too close again, and the mention losing the man that raised them – all of it threatens to turn into one of those hugs that Luke can't figure out how to get out of with his dignity intact. Exactly the kind of thing that will make Bo _worry_ about him. And there's no way to escape this small space that they're tapped in.

"Maybe I just grew up." It's technically not a lie, not with that out-clause of a _maybe_ up at the front end. It's more of a red herring, is what it is. A distraction.

"Maybe you just got old." Bo's always been wonderfully distractible.

"Maybe," Luke says, hands up on that broad chest and shoving at it. "But I can still take you."

Bo shoves back, and it's almost like one of those martial arts demonstrations that his jumpers used to watch on the office television. Slow, deliberate, more of stylized wrestling match than the real thing.

"I seem to recall flipping you a couple of years back." True enough, in the living room of the farmhouse. The old couch was probably the only familiar thing left in the room after the house got renovated. Jesse sat on the cedar chest acting as a referee, checked to make sure Luke was all right after he tumbled out of sight. Old man was already dying by then, probably, though he'd never have admitted to it.

"I let you," he says, because it is his uncle's memory that still holds enough sway over the moment to lead them into that hug that he won't be able to get out of. He can't go recollecting those days in too much vivid detail, can't afford to make Bo worry. "You was so nervous about telling Enos how Daisy had been kidnapped that I wanted to spare you."

The wrestling match – every bit as sad as two men trapped in a small room with the ghost of the life they had and loved but somehow managed to lose all the same – lands Bo on the closest bed. Luke follows him there, watches as he offers his hands for the pinning.

"Thanks," Bo says, giving no indication whether he's grateful for Luke letting him win a match three years ago, or whether it's for helping him to lose this one. Doesn't matter, Luke kisses his acceptance of the gratitude. Lips follow the same slow motions as their hands, arms, bodies. Luke settles one leg between where Bo's are spread open, lets go of one of Bo's wrists to run his fingers through that blonde hair. Just as soft as he remembers it, and he has to admit, his cousin's aged very well. Not even the hint of grey, and Luke was already getting some snow on the mountaintop back before he left Hazzard.

Bo's free hand pushes against his shoulder, takes him a few tries to understand the message. Doesn't want him away, wants him equal, lying on his side next to Bo. Easier maybe, for the lazy man to run his fingers along the grain of Luke's beard – he doesn't have to reach up, doesn't even have to lift his elbow off the bed. Doesn't have to do anything more than close his eyes, and snuggle in closer. Kisses peacefully die away, absence hardly noticeable as their hands continue their soothing motion.

Rain clatters on the window, Bo yawns. Luke reckons it won't do him any harm to let him sleep until the weather settles down, and they can go look for dinner. Settles to watching over his cousin like he always has, studying the worry lines there at the corners of his eyes. Somewhere between the desire to smooth those away and the resolution to make sure that no more of them appear, Luke follows him into slumber.


	63. Finding the Right Path

Finding the Right Path

It's quiet, save for the creaking of bedsprings, when the warmth of Luke leaves his arms. Doesn't go far, Bo can feel the way the mattress still sags over on that side of the bed, but he can't see him. Full dark and he has no idea how long they've been sleeping. Lacks real conviction about being awake, too. But the room has gotten cold, or he got used to the feel of Luke's body heat that close, he's not sure which. Doesn't matter, he shivers and gives up on sleep.

"What time is it?" he asks into the dark. There's a shadow there, nothing terribly distinct, but he reckons it's got to be Luke. There wasn't much of anything else in this room besides the two of them and the beds. They never even got around to hauling in their duffels.

"Dunno," Luke answers. "Midnight?" Rustle but no movement. If Bo had to wager a guess, he'd say Luke's rubbing at his eyes. Speaking of getting old, he suspects the man might do well to dig their uncle's old reading glasses out of his dresser when they get back to Hazzard.

So he stretches his body out from where it was curled against that heat source. Cranes his neck to find the digital clock – he's spent enough nights in hotel rooms to know that there always is one, somewhere – and sees that his cousin's powers of estimation were off by a couple of hours. "Two-oh-seven," he says in answer to his own question.

"Ain't no restaurant going to be open at this hour." And there goes his pessimist cousin assuming the worst again. As if he's never heard of a truck stop. "We might as well get on the road and pick up breakfast in a couple of hours. Maybe we can make up some time from what we lost yesterday."

On the surface, it sounds reasonable. They can go from now until it gets dark again, probably make it most of the way across these flat, dead plains states that he's never lost any love for. Maybe cut half a day off the end of the trip, and pulling into Hazzard in the daylight would be a mercy.

Except going that span in two separate vehicles will only give Luke time to work himself up into his next fit of temper, twisting some word or other that got said this afternoon into meaning something it was never meant to. The whole day convincing himself of how the Duke boys are doomed to misery, and Bo will have to start all over again in calming him down.

"Luke," he says, sitting up. Hand out in front of him like a blind man, searching for his cousin. Finds a back, slides up onto his knees behind to wrap both arms around him. Chin on Luke's shoulder and, "You believe me when I say that I love you, right?"

A yawn, a nod.

Not good enough. "You believe me when I say that I love you, right?" It's not the kind of thing that can get said too many times.

"Yes, Bo, I believe you when you say that you love me." It's a third grader, dutifully repeating lessons back to the teacher under threat of getting his knuckles rapped, spine rigid and on his best behavior. Still not good enough.

"You got to believe it more than you believe them voices that whisper doubts into your ears." Muscles under him tighten and shift, then there are warm hands gripping his forearms. If they could see each other, he's pretty sure Luke's face would be calling him an idiot for suggesting he hears voices. "If you'd tell me them doubts, I'd make them go away." But he's glad there's no light in the room, because these are the kinds of things that can only be said into the dark. As it is, he has to fight against those hands that want to shove his arms off. "Since you ain't gonna do that, I got to make you promise. Promise me you believe me when I say that I love you _more_ than you believe in all them doubts, Luke."

"I—" wants to be another recitation by rote, but it never makes it there. All the stalwart resistance in Luke's body disintegrates into a slump. Bo has to accommodate the change by loosening his arms, curving his own spine. "How long before you go back to girls, Bo?"

"Never," he answers, tightening his arms down again. "I ain't never going back, because I wasn't never happy there. Half them girls—" no it was more than that "—most of them girls was just supposed to make you jealous, was all."

"It worked," Luke mumbles; a quiet, miserable little confession.

"No, it didn't. All it did was push you further away from me." He sighs at the truth he should have realized sooner, the truth he knew all along. "It's still pushing you away from me now. All them girls Luke, and wasn't none of them you."

But those words are not enough to make the man in his arms sit up straight again, push against his arms and announce himself strong enough to face this life they've chosen together, or even this single day apart. There's something else. Bo waits, feeling the breath enter and leave the body in front of his. He's almost got his own breath timed to match it exactly when Luke breaks the rhythm.

"Why me?" Comes out smaller than he ever remembers Luke being, just a toddler hiding in the folds of his mother's skirt. Hard to imagine his cousin that young, has to remind himself that Luke _did_ have a mother back then. He knows his cousin has flashes of memory of their lives before Uncle Jesse, it's just hard to wrap his mind around the fact that Luke's first years are so different from his own.

Why does he love Luke, seems to be the question at hand. He supposes he could flip it around, ask it back, and it would be just as hard to answer. And really, love is supposed to be too mysterious, too special for explanations. It's nothing that ought to get closely analyzed, jammed under a microscope in search of all its weak spots and fissures. But this _is_ Luke in his arms – and he's been asked why he loves him, not why he's driven crazy by him.

"Because you always came for me. No matter what fool thing I'd done, you always followed right after me to bring me back. Even when I fought you all the way." _Because you loved me first _– sounds like cowardice in his own head, but it's not. It's just the truth.

"I didn't follow after you to NASCAR that second time."

"No, but I figure we're all entitled to one mistake. Mine was leaving, yours was not following. We're both fools that lost fifteen years because of it. Luke," he doesn't have any answers, no sound reason wrapped up in old man wisdom like their uncle would dispense, no blunt logic like Luke normally wields. "I love you because I always have, even when I was too big a fool to say so. All right?"

The question hangs there. A lifetime with Luke and it all seems to come down to his acceptance of a few stupid words. It takes two to agree, Jesse always said, and Bo realizes now that Luke's the one supposed to do the talking to his agreeing, and there's no telling if it can work the other way around.

"Stop fighting me, Luke," he whispers, and he's not sure why. The man's about as limp as he's ever been, no vim or vigor in him.

But it makes Luke lift his head, turn it, makes his hand come up to find the back of Bo's neck, wrist turning his chin for a pathetic little kiss. Corners of lips and that's not enough, so he moves back to make room, pulls Luke with him.

On their knees, kissing like teenagers on a picnic blanket under the shade of a tree, but never sure who might happen upon them. Tentative and nervous, and wondering where it will lead and whether they ought to get right back into the car that brought them here, go back to the safety of town where things can never progress beyond ice cream cones and holding hands.

When his hand reaches for Luke's cheek, it comes away wet.

"Luke," he whispers, but it's not the kind of thing that can be talked about. Too fragile for words with all their crashing noise; even the force behind sucking in the breath to say anything could break this thing between them. He moves instead, lays back and pulls Luke to follow him. It's not hard, doesn't require any effort. Kisses to match those tears, quiet, slow, damp. Hands not willing to stray lower than shoulders, not yet. This right here is nothing like those first nights, when Luke would turn to him, desperately begging for what he wanted. Fear, he realizes, must have ruled those nights. Worry over possible rejection, and _damn_, Bo's never known that feeling. He's never had a single doubt that whatever he asked of Luke, it would be freely given.

He turns his hands loose then, lets them explore Luke's body, lets them tell his cousin just how much he's wanted. Clothes – two days old anyway – give way to the need between them. When Luke has to pull away then stumble into the bathroom for whatever slick substance he can find (hotel hair conditioner, which ought to make them flinch, but somehow doesn't), no one mentions anything about how they're not in this hotel alone. And when Luke climbs on top of him – because that is what it takes for him to believe, and for Bo to believe that he believes – the love they make is slow, heartbreaking. But that's all right. They're saying goodbye, after all, to their previous lives. A youth together that was too bright and intense to last, was forced to burn out from its own unharnessed energy. An adulthood spent apart, with its fleeting joys and persistent miseries. These are things that must be buried and mourned before two Duke boys can move on to their new life together.

"I love you Luke," is stronger now than it was an hour ago, than it has ever been.

Powerful enough to elicit "I love you," right back.


	64. Time to Go Home

Time to Go Home

By the time they manage to get their lazy butts out of bed and freshened up (which is an adventure all its own, complete with barefoot trek out to the Jeep for fresh clothes followed by a shower lacking enough hot water for them both to get genuinely clean) it's coming onto dawn anyway. He talks Bo into getting back onto the road for an hour or two first, before they pull off on an exit with a lot of restaurants to choose from. He reckons that a good, hearty breakfast – the likes of which farm boys are raised on – will help to bring back their drained energy.

Tired, despite the fact that they slept for a good ten hours, all told. But it's got that feel to it like it's been well earned. The same sensation he used to get at the end of harvest, when they'd clear the fields of everything they'd need to survive through the long winter. For a few days after, the whole family would stick close, nursing whatever leftover aches there might have been and relaxing together.

Makes it a little hard to face the long hours of travel ahead of them, this exhaustion. But they're Dukes, they don't need too many of their faculties to drive. The genuine challenge comes from the fact that those hours are spent apart, when Bo has an obvious desire to be within touching range, and Luke figures there's no harm in indulging that instinct. So they stop often. They need to keep in visual communication anyway. Because they never much figured out properly going to bed last night, they never brought any of the two-way radio batteries in to be recharged. No juice for talking, so they have to rely on old moonshiner signals – the flash of headlights, two taps on the brakes, a hand out the window, palm up meaning one thing and palm down another – to make their wishes known. But they're Dukes, they don't need words.

Breakfast in a diner, stop at a convenience store for more supplies, gas an hour later, lunch at a roadside picnic table. Better than a fine restaurant, even; here there's plenty of fresh air and traffic moves by too quickly to distinguish whether or not his finger strokes across Bo's knuckles. Last night's storms seem to have cleared the skies all across the plains, leaving behind only feathered clouds and the smell of wet dirt. It's time to go home.

"Come on," he says to rouse both of their tired souls. "If we don't get moving, we ain't never going to get out of here." Somewhere in the middle of Missouri, no place either of them wants to end up spending any more time in than they need to, exhausted or not.

_Stop fighting me, Luke_ – the kind of words only Bo could say, and maybe even he didn't know just how profound they were. Would probably be annoyed to hear that they had any deep meaning, actually; Bo has always preferred to be taken at face value. No, it was more of a Bo Duke flash of brilliance, idiot savant with no clues how smart he has the potential to be.

Fighting, that's what he's been doing for years. Fighting with Bo over Diane Benson, over Cindy Ballou, over standing too close, leaning too far away (out the window of the General and he could have gotten killed that way – but it had happened dozens of times before that one day when it took Luke's breath away and called a screeching halt to everything they'd ever been), then over leaving all together. Fighting over being apart, fighting against being together, fighting himself for wanting that most dangerous thing of all.

Because never having Bo was an emptiness. It was missing his cousin, the little blonde brat whose snotty nose he'd spent a childhood wiping. It was a hunger that could be staved off through hard work, by taking youngsters under his wing and nurturing them through their earliest days in a dangerous profession until they could manage to look after themselves. It wasn't entirely fulfilling, but it would do.

But having Bo – not like he'd had him all of his life, but like he'd wanted him for so long that it was hard to pinpoint when it started – then losing him, well that would be death. Oh, he's a Duke, he'd never stoop to suicide. But whatever life he lived after losing Bo would be pointless, disastrous. He doesn't even want to think about it.

Bo's been fighting him, too. A mirror image of push and pull, matching resistance to his own force. The comfortable, familiar struggle of their lives together since the day that tragedy coupled with near-poverty locked them together in the same tiny bedroom.

_Stop fighting me, Luke_ – Bo's words, and like that, it was over. No more throwing himself against bricks or boulders trying to crack some sense into his skull, no more lashing out at Bo (and Daisy, and anyone else who gave the slightest inkling of knowing too much or too little, who threatened to come between him and what had always been his), no more wild feats and crazy stunts that dared death to come and take him. It was done.

He's beaten the hell out of Bo, left more bruises and welts than any fistfight ever could. It's no wonder that all the man wants to do is find a quiet corner to curl up in and sleep. Luke seconds that motion, remembering the day after a boxing match. Any match really, but the worst was that one in Hazzard Square, where he dropped his hands and let himself be pummeled. Bo was a twitching mess afterward, walking guilt over a fight that wasn't as much his fault as he thought. Trying to keep his voice low, under the thrum of that persistent headache, doing the chores of two men, giving him time and space to sleep it off. And Luke reckons he needs to return that favor. But the side of a dusty highway in the middle of flat Missouri is no place to do it.

Despite his aches and exhaustion, Bo still loves him, and Luke reckons that's nothing short of a miracle. Which is why he lets that hand rest on his elbow after they've packed up their picnic and stowed the remnants in his Jeep, then accepts a quick kiss in the shadow cast by the van. Figures they're pretty well sheltered, and the cars are moving too quickly to make any real sense of the gesture anyway.

"This," he says, forcing himself to take a step back, "is why we need to get home." To the hills that raised them and the soil that made them into the men that they are. Two solid days and they can be there. But they have to get moving.

Because – and neither of them can refute this – they aren't alone on this highway.


	65. Home at Last

Home at Last

Luke makes them get off the road at eleven, regardless of the fact that they're almost in Nashville by then. They've made good time, and pushing on for another four hours or so would get them home, but his cousin won't hear of it.

"Fog," he points out, which isn't much of an argument. Mountain mist is the moonshine runner's best friend, especially when it hangs thickly into the hollows. It used to gather Sweet Tilly into its fiercely protective folds, leaving lawmen and revenuers to hang their cars up on guardrails, or sucking them into its ponds and puddles.

"You ain't as young as you used to be," is Bo's response, as they stroll tiredly across the parking lot, duffels slung across their shoulders, toward another cinderblock hotel. It's been a lot of years since they were wild country boys, delivering the family wares. Nothing to lose until they almost lost everything, and in those days Luke might just have been the more reckless of the two of them.

"You're just as smart as you ever was," comes back at him. He glowers, and that only results in a face getting pulled right back at him, but Luke can't hold it. Turns into a chuckle and a hand ruffling through Bo's hair in fond affection. Familiar feel to it all – his cousin's mouth has always been rough but his hands are gentle, and Bo reckons that's better than the other way around. "Besides, this way we can take the scenic route," which means the old roads that wander up over ridges and down through the hollows, "the rest of the way home. Unless you've turned into a city boy that don't like to go where the map don't show."

It'll add hours to their trip, and if nostalgia dictates, it could even add days. But there's a smile hidden in the blue of Luke's eyes, a challenge in the angle of his eyebrows. It'll be worth it.

At least that's what he reckons as he drifts off to sleep somewhere around midnight, head pillowed on Luke's shoulder, hand over his heart and legs in a tangle. Seems a little less appealing when the hand starts nudging against his shoulder only a few hours later. There are words, too, something about _time to get up, Bo_.

"You know," he mumbles in the general direction of that jostling hand. "You ain't got the first idea how to get your money's worth out of a hotel." Because six hours of sleep isn't worth the sixty dollars that Luke forked over to the snot-nosed kid stuck on night duty at the desk last night. "Just think of all the things we could get up to before check out."

That right there gets him shoved until he hovers there at the mattress edge with the choice of putting his feet down or hitting the cold floor on his backside. He opts for sitting up, rubbing his hands over his face.

"I'm up," he mutters, then turns to see Luke still lounging there in the dingy early morning light. "You ain't," he notes, because perhaps it's simply an oversight on Luke's part. Meant to get up but lost track of where the floor was.

"Don't take me half the time it takes you to get ready." Punctuated by a yawn, like Luke could just drop right back off to sleep. "I ain't in love with the mirror."

"That's because," Bo informs him, turning around and stretching back out on his belly to rest his chin on Luke's shoulder. "You ain't half as pretty as me." Good morning kiss then, and if it's rife with stale breath, it's still a heck of a lot sweeter than getting shoved out of bed. "Besides," is his next valid point, punctuated by a kiss to the corner of Luke's jaw. "You ain't got to shave."

Luke's jaw slips from under his lips as the man cocks his head to try to see him better. Futile effort, Bo just shifts his focus to the neck below. "Thought you liked my beard," he says, and there's genuine doubt in the tone.

"I do, Luke. Don't," he has no right to ask this of the man, not really. Luke would never do the same in return. He kisses a few more soft spots on the white skin while he makes up his mind. "Don't go shaving it." Might as well be honest about what he wants. His cousin's perfectly capable of ignoring him, if their youth together is any example.

He settles to sucking on his cousin's windpipe. Doesn't do anything much for him, but Luke's arching his neck into the touch. "Bo," he says, and the feeling of vibration in his lips just about makes him giggle. "We'll be home by night. Sooner if you want." It's a request. _Please don't start this here. _Softened by thick fingers stroking through his hair.

"We can take our time getting home," Bo assures him. He reckons they'll have a lifetime for neck kisses, once they get there. After chores, probably. And not before breakfast, and not in daylight hours, and never outside, and only on Thursdays, maybe, but it's a lifetime of Thursdays that they've got together. "If you come get in the shower with me now." Can't explain his interest in sharing time under the warm spray, but he doesn't have to. Luke seems perfectly willing to indulge him.

And when they're clean and dressed, after they've packed up the few things they got out for the night and Luke's about to sling his duffel bag over his shoulder, Bo stops him. Wraps both arms around his waist, feels Luke respond by slinging arms around his neck. A hug, warm and lingering, for the sole reason that it feels good to be able to hold onto Luke, and feel him holding on right back.

— — — —

"I knew you was gonna miss that cutoff," Luke's voice comes chirping through the two-way. Makes Bo regret how they charged up the batteries overnight. The smart one in the Jeep has been using it to show off his superior memory all morning.

"I knew you was gonna take it," Bo answers back. Because Luke's route is not better, it's just the difference between a high road and a low road. Both of these old trails come out together, and if Bo's swings wider, Luke's arcs higher. They should get to the same place at about the same time. And when they're close to that intersection, the race is on. Two lanes becoming one and neither Duke has the inclination to back down. In the final descent Luke hits a bump that they both know is there, and lets his Jeep hop to land in the road in front of the van.

"I love you, Luke," Bo calls through the radio.

"Yeah, well," is trying to be grumpy, but there's obvious pride in that tone. "You best hope I didn't break nothing with that fool stunt." Silence for a minute or two as they bump over rutted dirt roads, then, "I love you too," comes back over the radio at him. He reckons that if anything of Luke's got broken, well, he'll just have to make it up to the man when they get home.

— — — —

"Don't even think about it," Luke whispers in his ear. They finally pulled into the dirt of the farmyard sometime after dark. Luke had to switch on the fuse boxes, then turn on the gas before they could get around to dinner. Nothing more than beer in the fridge, but there was peanut butter, and then there was clean up. After that came hauling in all of the things Luke considered valuable (or just plain wanted inside with him), followed by washing up and brushing their teeth like good boys. Then and only then did he think about sleeping arrangements. "Not without her permission."

Because it's Daisy's bedroom door that Bo's standing in with Luke at his back, eyeing the queen sized bed that she's got. Or had – she doesn't seem to be using it anymore. Besides, it was always too big for just one skinny person, never got properly used.

"We have to tell her first," brings him back to reality. Lusting after her bed is one thing, but dealing with the wrath of Daisy Duke in order to earn the right to sleep in it hardly seems worthwhile. So he shrugs his shoulders, and follows Luke down the hallway to what has served as their bedroom since they had the house remodeled. Not the same as it used to be, hell, it's a whole story up, but those are their same beds. Same trophies and banners on the walls, same old curtains on the window. Waits for Luke to climb into his bed, then snaps off the light and follows him there. After all, he's spent many a night in this bed over his lifetime. It might be a bit small, but he's safe here. Luke won't let him fall off the edge and get hurt.


	66. Family Meeting

Family Meeting

Bo's gone missing. Wasn't quite what he had in mind when he announced how little help he needed unpacking his clothes. He just figured to cut his clearly bored cousin some slack when he'd already spent days packing it all up at the one end, then driving it to the other end. After all, they're in Hazzard now, where the air is warm and the land familiar, and there's no reason for the naturally energetic Bo to be cooped up for another minute.

There is, however, still the consideration of the van. "By five," had been his condition for turning the man loose, "we got to get it to Capitol City." Or else pay for another day of having it; paying, essentially, for the oil stain it's leaving in the dirt of their land, because that's about the only purpose it's serving right now.

So he figures his cousin shouldn't have gone far (_shouldn't_ but then Bo's always been attracted to the one thing he _shouldn't_ do), ought to be somewhere within yelling distance. And if he were a dog or sheep, Luke would go ahead and use that method. Instead he's wandering the house, eliminating any possibility that Bo's somewhere inside and just being uncharacteristically quiet.

They didn't sleep particularly well last night. He reckons that the lust they both feel for Daisy's bed is probably the best motivation they've come up with so far for finding a way to tell her. But when they disentangled themselves from the cramped quarters of his mattress this morning, Luke still hadn't figured out any kind of plan for how to break it to her easy. So he didn't even bring up the notion this morning, just kissed Bo's cheek and sent him out for breakfast foods while he unloaded the van. Had to hand over the keys to the Jeep, too, because his cousin refused to take the General without him.

"We got to take him out together," was some kind of blonde logic wrapped up in nostalgia. And a thing had to have greater substance than gut feeling in order to be refuted, so Luke didn't even try.

Doughnuts and beer for breakfast, presented with a giggle by the man who was capable of making fried chicken that would make Daisy's eyes go green with jealousy. Glazed, no less, and it wasn't exactly the best breakfast for a day of vigorous work. But it was tradition, Saturday mornings always did start this way, so after making a face that expressed his views on the matter, Luke went ahead and gobbled a few down.

No surprise when Bo's energy flagged after awhile, the sugar gone from his body, and that was when Luke set him free. Only an hour or two ago, and now would be a good time for him to show up again. They can go out to Capitol City and get a reasonably nutritious lunch after they drop off the van. Then, maybe, the two of them can settle into some honest work.

It hits him in a flash, where Bo is. He's come to the last room of the house, one he hasn't been in for years. The only thing that stayed just about the way it always was, even after he and Bo dumped so much of their earnings into fixing up the rest of the house. Jesse's bedroom, if he opened the door, would still have those same old unfinished floorboards, worn smooth by generation after generation of Dukes pacing over them. Babes in arms being jiggled, boys sliding in sock feet, old men up in the middle of the night for yet another trip to the bathroom, and what would otherwise be splintered is perfectly safe, even for bare feet. Old oak bed that they couldn't lift out of there if they wanted to, warped-glass window looking out on galaxies of stirred up farmyard dust, catching sunbeams.

The old man's love affair with the past was fervent, fierce. Just by closing his eyes, Jesse Duke could see into a time when his clan was formidable, a family of five boys rambling the hills and woodlands, ruling the night in their old moonshine runners. When their grandfather doled out discipline, when their grandmother dished out hearty meals to the children she'd given birth to and the ones she hadn't in equal measure. A time when everyone was welcome, when winters were colder and farm work was harder, but somehow everything was perfect all the same. Until Jesse's youngest brother died of influenza before he reached twenty, Grandma Duke's passing two years later, followed within a year by Grandpa. Then there was the spectacular demise of Bo and Luke's parents, and a few years later, Daisy's father finally gave up his struggle with cancer. Once Lavinia was gone, the past became an almost sacred thing, and lectures about it felt an awful lot like church.

Still, when his eyes opened up again from that sepia world he loved to visit so much, their uncle lived in the present. For the three cousins, mostly, although in retrospect they probably have J.D. Hogg to thank for that, too. Nothing like being on the wrong side of the law to make a man pay close attention to the here and now. And their Uncle also held out hope for a future when the Duke clan would once again fill this house with noise, love, and the smell of fresh pies in the oven.

He knows where Bo is now. He nods a silent thanks at the old door that he never opened; gratitude to the man for raising them, for still watching over them, for guiding him to his cousin.

Bo's head is down when Luke spots him, noon sun glinting off of blonde hair, revealing that misleading halo of fluff. Aunt Lavinia, who is buried just feet from where Bo stands, always figured him for an angel. And she'd be impressed with him now, chin on hands at the top of a rake handle; he's been doing some tidying up here on this quiet, wooded rise on an unimproved quadrant of the Duke property. Not that it looks a whole lot different from the way the rest of the land has gone to seed in the past several years.

But it's not Lavinia's stone that Bo's stare is fixated on, and Luke knew that before he even came out here. And the answer to his other question is there in Bo's posture.

It's nothing Luke would think to do, and yet he understands it perfectly. The harmony of Duke brains, or maybe it's closer to infection. Raised in close proximity to blonde logic, Luke may not quite suffer from it, but he knows it when he sees it.

He could ask Bo how it's going, but he doesn't need to. The discussion Bo is having with the man who brought him up, even though it's taking place within Bo's own head, is not going well. Despite his hopeful nature, he's having a hard time convincing the old man that his two nephews belong together.

"Remember what he said about Daisy," he says, jumping right into the conversation without so much as a _pardon me_. Bo knows he's there and Jesse's the one who told him where to find his cousin, so there's no need to announce himself. "And L.D."

"Yeah, but we was right about him." Leave it to Bo to think that matters one bit, this many years later. "He was a fool." There are worse words to describe the man, but the Duke boys are, after all, in the presence of their elders and guardians.

"He was," Luke agrees, "and Jesse knew it every bit as much as we did. But it wasn't our place to get in the way of love, he said." And, seems to him, the oldster had threatened to whip their tails if they interfered in any way. Bo's nostrils had flared, his eyes had squinted down, and the 'yes, sir' he gave may not have been completely respectful. But he'd lived by it, he'd bitten his tongue until it bled, slung an arm across Luke's shoulders, and watched the ceremony unfold. And if his gripping fingers had left a few bruises on Luke's skin, the Duke boys had never spoken of it.

"It didn't mean he thought it was right," is Bo's adamant response. Duke stubbornness, red faced, raw throated, snot-nosed insistence. The kind of thing that's about to erupt into tears, because Bo's fighting a losing battle. He's Lavinia's angel, Jesse's sunshine boy, and he's supposed to make everyone smile. Never has been able to tolerate how sometimes, in order to make one person happy, it's necessary to make another cry.

Time to touch him, to remind Bo that he's not alone. "No, it don't," Luke says, arm around his waist. "It means he loved Daisy more than he hated her being with L.D., is all." Bo lets go of the rake then – man, same as the boy, never bothers to worry about where it falls, and if it just barely misses Jesse's stone on the way down, his older nephew is the only one who sees it – both arms around Luke, head buried in his shoulder. "He loved you," Luke reminds him. But that isn't the point.

"He loved you, too," Bo answers and that isn't the point either.

"I love you," is what matters now. Their uncle wouldn't approve, and that's what Bo cries for – that when it comes right down to it, he might let it happen, but Jesse Duke would never think it right. "It don't make," Bo's inability to reconcile who he wants Jesse to have been to who he really was, "any of them other things you said wrong. About how he'd rather we was with each other than alone." That, Luke figures, is probably true. He might not want to know the details, but their uncle would figure that any kind of love is better than no love at all.

Bo's head nods, but his posture doesn't change. And if feeling the body in his arms wrack with sobs makes his own breath hitch in answer, Luke reckons there are a lot of tears to be cried – about who they were born to be, then who they were raised to be, and finally, who they turned out to be. None of those things quite worked out like any of the Dukes who are buried at their feet might have wanted. Then again, it might just be that none of them would want anything more than for their heirs to love the land and each other with as much gusto as generations past.

So he knots his fingers into Bo's hair and pulls, gently, until the man stands back up to something close to his full height. A kiss then, spit, salt, snot and sweat mixing, and if the blood that flows under the surface of their lips is the same, so be it. Right here in front of the parents that gave them birth and the ones that raised them, Luke stakes his claim. Approval or no, Bo is his.


	67. How Bad Could it Be?

How Bad Could it Be?

"What is it that you don't figure I can handle?" Luke's getting cranky. Seemed like a reprieve at first, when Daisy told them that it'd be May before she could get down to welcome them back. They offered to go up to see her in Durham, and her southern hospitality had just about won out. She'd agreed to host them, but said she wouldn't have a ton of free time; something about teaching a course on lichens. Hard to picture Daisy as schoolmarm, even harder to imagine sitting through a class about a tiny fungus that he's never seriously considered as anything more than a sometime pest. But somehow the idea brought out a certain amount of sympathy in Luke, who decided that their cousin had enough to worry about right now, and didn't have any particular need to be distracted and disturbed by her errant kin.

And that was fine with Bo, who couldn't count himself as particularly eager to get his head flattened by a frying pan (and that was a conservative concern – if those claws of hers got involved in the dispute, there was no telling what body parts he and Luke could wind up minus), or to be deafened by an angry shriek.

Except there was the bed. Luke was adamant about that; the mattress (frame and box spring too, because Bo had ideas about how they only needed part of Daisy's bed to be comfortable together) would remain unsullied until such time as their sweet cousin deemed it fair territory for two bed-sharing boys. Which could well be never, as far as Bo can see. And Luke – Luke is getting cranky. Man needs more sleep than they seem capable of getting in a twin bed.

"Couldn't we finish this conversation later?" Bo asks, because after all, he is kind of busy at the moment.

Luke cranes his neck to get a clear look out the window behind them. "You losing your touch?" is the snide question that gets tossed over his shoulder. "It's just Cletus."

"No, I ain't losing my touch." It just seems that mid-chase is not a particularly conducive moment during which to be arguing over whether Luke needs to help him move his stuff out of Atlanta. Hell, as far as Bo's concerned, neither of them need to make the trip up there, he can just hire a couple of money-starved teenaged sons of pit crew members to toss it all in the dumpster. Or almost all of it. There might be a few things worth keeping. "Fine," he snaps. "I'll lose him."

It means a detour, but then this whole morning has felt off-course from the beginning. A simple trip into town for food, and just because Bo has figured out liking to cook doesn't mean he's any more interested in spending time wandering the aisles of a grocery store than he ever was. Bickering with Luke over which of them was going to abandon the other to shopping for a mission to see whether Cooter was in the old garage or not. A funny smirk from Tillie Rheubottom – one that knew all about sniping couples whose best days were lost in some romantic past – made the Dukes tacitly agree to just do the damned shopping together. Even if it did take the form of two grown men marching double-time and all but flinging groceries into a cart. Off to the garage, where of course there was no Cooter, then heading back to the farm. Barely got off the paved roads of town before Cletus decided to make fair game of them and all through this stupid morning, there's been the same litany.

"How bad could it be? You got a live-in girlfriend you ain't told me about?"

Yes, that's it exactly. A live in girlfriend that he's been ignoring for more than a month while he was off first with Gabby, then Luke. A live-in girlfriend that's a lousy maid, which explains the disastrous condition of the place. Hell, half the reason he doesn't want his cousin there is because he doesn't reckon the man needs to know just how poorly he kept his apartment, not when he's the fastidious Luke Duke with the alphabetized kitchen.

Off the dusty High Ridge Road, and down to where the dirt tends more toward mud. The siren at their backs never falters nor changes pitch; Cletus is still back there, tongue wagging in the breeze like a dog with its head out the window. There's a dip ahead (to match the one behind them) where the mud is thick enough to spew out in black globs as the General passes over it. Makes a mess of the cruiser's windshield, but doesn't faze the deputy.

"Dang it, Cletus," he mutters under his breath. "I tried to be nice about it." A series of rises further along their way that he leapfrogs, even if Luke does grab for the dashboard like he figures he's about to draw his last breath. But no, the Duke boys can breathe just fine, it's Cletus that winds up underwater, at least in that moment when the splash envelops the car completely. When everything settles, it turns out to be chest deep water that the deputy is going to have to slog his way out of. "He ain't as young as he used to be, you know," he informs Luke, because it's entirely his cousin's fault that the poor guy had to get dunked in the first place.

"He seems to be all right, though." And he is, he just fine, same slack-jawed look on his face that he's worn since he was a kid. Wet, annoyed, but fine. "You could go in after him, if you think it'll help," Luke offers, his face the very picture country charm and generosity.

"Or you could just put a shout out to Mavis," Bo counters, because that's who was in the garage when they left it only a few minutes ago. Pretty little blonde thing, and he's pretty sure Luke looked at her more than once. Hard to make up his mind between jealousy and the flattering realization that Luke has always enjoyed eyeballing blondes.

Luke shrugs, does as he's told. C.B.s may not exactly be as popular with the kids as they were when the Dukes were younger, but there are still enough users to make them worth having here in Hazzard. And Cooter may no longer be Congressman, but he still rules the roost at the Hazzard Garage where the C.B. remains the primary means of communication.

"I ain't got a live-in girlfriend," he informs Luke, just when it looks like Cletus might actually make it out of that pond. Fishing in his pocket for a soggy ticket book and waterlogged pen, and Bo revs the engine. They're gone. "What I got there is a mess. And I don't figure you really want to clean up after me none."

"Whether I want to or not don't matter." They wave out the windows at the passing tow truck. Could be Mavis is driving, or maybe it's one of the Potter boys that Cooter's been employing on and off for the past couple of years. Glare on the windshield prevents them from being able to tell, but Dukes are polite country boys who greet anyone and everyone they see along their way. Even if they might prefer to use their hands to throttle each other. "I reckon we're together now, and there are going to be some things I don't feel like doing. Just like I don't much figure Jesse wanted to comb his hair for dinner every night, but he did it because it meant something to Lavinia. I ain't got to like helping you, Bo, but I reckon I'll do it anyway."

Well, at least Luke won't be able to complain about how he wasn't warned.

— — — —

"Lukas," tries to chastise, tries to sound strong like their Uncle Jesse, but it's a fool's effort. Teachers and guardians, even lawmen, could use his cousin's name that way and have it mean something. All his life Bo's only ever tossed out Luke's full name with affection; this attempt to change the feel of the name, to give it hard edges instead of the gentle curves it's always had, fails. Elicits a raised eyebrow atop an already angry face, and it's not pretty. None of it has been pretty.

Not from the time that he'd stood in the farmyard and announced to Luke that they didn't need more than the Jeep – hell, they didn't need more than the General, probably – to pack up and cart home anything that mattered to him.

"You got furniture," was Luke's point, punctuated by the way he hooked his thumbs into his back pockets and looked at the Jeep with a smirk. Calculating, no doubt the volume of space versus the size of Bo's couch, bed, kitchen table and—

"I got furniture," he agreed, because cataloguing it wasn't important, not when—"I just ain't got any interest in bringing none of it here."

There was the discussion of how much it cost and the waste involved in not keeping it, which he semi-successfully countered with the thought about the expense behind moving it, and how useless it would be in a farmhouse that was already fully furnished. The clincher was when he said he'd donate what he didn't want to the local children's charity – the rough equivalent of the orphanage of their youth. "Besides," he'd added. "I don't see where we'd want to replace none of the farm's furniture." They'd already disturbed the old place too much with their previous remodeling efforts, Luke was forced to agree.

Things got even less pretty on the road, where his cousin displayed blatant disgust for city drivers and one-way roads. Thing of it was, Bo probably even agreed with him, except he was being subjected to the hissed comments as if he were the cause of the problem. Made him snap something back about how it wasn't his fault that Luke had spent so many years in the least populated corner of the country (and got corrected with the information that Wyoming was emptier) and how he'd offered to drive in the first place since he knew the roads. Degenerated then, into a discussion of how Luke had known Atlanta since before Bo was born (which seemed highly suspicious to him, considering Dukes were not very likely to let their toddling boy run off to wander the city alone) before it skidded into new territory where what Luke really needed was for Bo to stop talking so he could concentrate. As if things had ever worked that way when the roles were reversed.

And now that they've started what they came here to do, he'd swear that Luke's fingers are magnetic. Attracted to everything Bo might not want him to see, and it gives him the unaccountable (and unwise) urge to slap those hands away. To tell his big cousin, who would never take this advice anyway, to just sit back and watch him work.

It might have helped if he had the first idea where all these little landmines were laid in the first place, but in truth, he doesn't. Little love notes left behind by women who had rolled over in the morning to find him gone, off to run practice laps at the Speedway, or to meet up with a sponsor for a photo shoot to accompany a press release. Could be he never read those notes, never noticed the cards they stuck into this drawer or that for him to find. Then again, could be he was the one who shoved them there himself, coming home tired and uninterested in anything so confining and cramped as a relationship. He can't swear he's seen half of these things before, including what's right there, clamped between Luke's forefinger and thumb, held away from his body like it's contaminated, and for all Bo knows, it might be.

Sarah-Beth maybe, or Charleen. No, too small (tiny really) lacy white panties, and Bo has no idea where they might have come from. Other than that Luke has been cleaning out his dresser, and it seems like – maybe it was Marigold? Most closely resembles her style, really – left him a present. One that he clearly didn't properly appreciate, what with him not knowing it was there. Until now, that is.

"Luke," is his second attempt to appeal to reason, to find the logical brain somewhere behind all those stiff muscles. Eyes, the one part of Luke that usually stays mild even when the rest of the man is unpredictable as a lightning bolt, are stormy and dark. "I—" don't even know whose those are. But that's not his best choice of words. Not that there's anything he can say that will make this any better. So he shuts his mouth and braces himself for violence.

It's not a fist that comes at him, more of a full-body hit. A tackle that fails, because there's a wall at his back, and harder than plaster, there's Luke's body at his front. Pinned between two immovable surfaces and that might just be a good thing – keeping him on his feet against a kiss so powerful it makes his head spin. Hard, wanting, more tooth than lip. Hands on his wrists, pinning them near his shoulders with points of pain where fingers dig in, and he doesn't fight against it. No part of what he's doing could be confused with putting up a struggle, but he does answer back. Tips his head into the kiss, answers the fury there with love, strokes where Luke's tongue lashes, accepts rigid muscle but offers a caress in return.

Turns out a kiss can't be both angry and gentle, can't survive two disparate intentions. He's still pressed against the wall by most of Luke's weight, wrists still caught, but their mouths come apart, heavy breathing in his ear.

"Is this going to help?" he asks. Because he knows what's pumping through Luke right now, the anger, the hurt, the need, and if this is going to make it better, he'll gladly do his part. But everything in him says this is a dangerous road they're on, one with sheer drop-offs on both sides, and treacherous curves ahead. "Luke?"


	68. Swimming in Honey

Swimming in Honey

"Oh no you don't, Luke Duke." Bo's tone is commanding, angry. Not half as disgusted as he'd expect, though. "Don't you go doing this, not when I just got you back." Hand on the back of his neck, pulling. Resistance is automatic, if foolish. Fingers slip in the sweat there, nails desperate for a grip. He can't say he's never been scratched by his cousin before, just not_ this_ cousin. "Don't you go running off on me, now."

Stupid thing to say to a man who is sitting on the shambles of a bedroom floor, surrounded by the litter of a single lifestyle, and maybe Bo's travel schedule takes some of the blame for the utter disarray of this place. Down on the ugly blue carpet, and not two feet from him is that pair of panties that started this mess.

"Ain't going nowhere," he says, because it's true. Less than a minute ago it was all a blur of movement, warm skin under his hands, smell of sweat and disturbed dust, and he could hear Bo both wanting it and not in the sighing moans. Could have ignored the undertones, the give where the cousin he knows so well has always taken, except for the words. _Is this going to help?_ No, it was only going to take a perfectly reasonable disaster and turn it into a catastrophe. The realization seems to have knocked him off his feet, though his slide to the ground took place in slow motion, and everything since has been like swimming in honey. Slow and thick, hard to breathe.

Hand sliding back and forth on his neck, rubbing sweat into the scratches there, but the intention is good. Better, by far, than whatever Luke thought he was trying to accomplish a minute ago. Another tug, and this time he gives in. Not a hug exactly, they're too awkwardly sprawled across the floor for that. Legs everywhere, no way to get closer together than they are without a heck of a lot more effort than they're willing to put in. Which leaves them with nothing more to do than lean on each other at odd angles. "Okay," Bo mutters. Still winded from the fight that never quite happened. "Just don't go quiet on me." _Don't go running off into your own head._

But Luke's present in this moment, couldn't get away from it if he wanted to. Fully aware of what he did and—

"You didn't hurt me." Sometimes he hates that Bo can halfway read his mind. "So don't you go thinking you did." Fingers on his face, turning it for a kiss. Press of lips that he doesn't return, gets a clucking tongue in response. "Luke," comes the chastisement, or maybe it's a request. "I want you to want me like that." A ridiculous notion; the man's a fool. No one should be wanted like that. "That much, maybe, but not that hard." Which makes so little sense that even Bo has to shake his head. "Damn it, Luke, talk to me." Just as demanding and illogical as ever.

"I'm sorry," seems to be what's called for here, but it doesn't help. Just makes those long fingers dig that much harder into his chin.

"You didn't hurt me," Bo hisses back at him. Dark eyes that close, and they look almost like Jesse's. The tone is similar to the old man's too, but the words are entirely different. "I ain't your baby cousin no more, Luke. If you want me like that," words he doesn't really want to listen to, but Bo's not about to stop saying them, "it's okay." No, it's not. "I mean, you can want me that much, and you can want it rough, and that's all right, you ain't going to hurt me. Just," absurd statement, and he has no intention whatsoever in taking the man up on it. "Not with the anger. You ain't got to be careful with me none, but if the reason you want to do it that way is because you're so mad you can't see straight, then I ain't going to want to. But I ain't afraid of you, Luke, and you ain't going to hurt me."

A fool's words, trying with utter desperation to sound wise as they echo through his head. Same feeling he used to get when Jesse would lecture him after the whipping. About how violence never solved anything (except, apparently, when it was doled out in carefully counted licks from a strap) and it wasn't so much that he had hit Bo as how angry he'd been when he'd done it. Red-faced, Jesse used to call his temper that, and it was almost funny because no one got more rosy-cheeked than his uncle in the middle of a lecture.

None of what Bo's doing now makes a shred more sense than those things Jesse used to say. But whatever the hell it is that he's trying to convey, Bo is downright earnest about it. Hand on his chin loosening its grip, stroking along his face and to the back of his neck again. Exploring, like Luke is unknown territory where feral, starving animals might lurk, fangs bared. And he can hardly be blamed for that caution.

"They ain't never been nothing but distractions, them girls. And they wasn't even very good at it. They was always frustrated with me not paying them enough mind." Which might just explain why they felt compelled to leave their underwear lying around. Careless relationships, leaving sloppy debris behind. "And I reckon that's because I was always thinking – remember how sometimes we'd double date?" Of course he does. It started out as frustration, because wherever Luke went, Bo would follow. Never seemed to matter one bit to the pest if a girl was there, too; he must've figured it was like having Daisy along with them. Except Luke had never gone out of his way to slip off into some private crevice with his female cousin like he did with cheerleaders. Turned out the only way to keep his sanity was to find a girl for his kid cousin, too. Eventually Bo started finding his own girls just fine, but they shared a car, so they shared dates, right up until the day his cousin left Hazzard. "And the girls would throw up their hands because we was too busy paying attention to each other to even notice them." Yeah, that happened sometimes, too. "Whenever I was with a girl here, Luke, I kept looking for you. Couldn't never find you, but the girls noticed me looking. They got mad a lot. Could be that when they was teaching me to cook was the only time I was paying them any mind."

His neck's getting pulled on again, back into that awkward non-hug of a few minutes ago. Luke relaxes into it, because it's what Bo wants. He didn't need to be told all over again that Bo loves him best; though there have been long stretches of time when he could convince himself otherwise, he's always known it to be true. It just smarts like a slap to the face to have evidence in front of him that Bo ever loved anyone else, even a little bit. Retaliation against the sting of pain was just instinct, and it wasn't even Bo that his fury was directed at. It was the girls, the past, his own asinine self that needed to be taught a lesson.

"I'm sorry," he says again, even if he's not supposed to be. Quiet this time, close enough to taste the sweat caught in the hair around Bo's ear. Arms trying their damnedest to reach all the way around those wide shoulders, but the angle between the two of them is too awkward.

"I know," is Bo's admission that what happened could have degenerated into something much worse. "But you didn't hurt me. And if you want to – well we can."

He has to laugh at the notion. Loud, hard, head-tipping laughter, and if Bo's feelings ought to be hurt by it, he doesn't seem to know any better. Arms grip tighter and giggles answer back into Luke's ear.

No, he does not want to have near-violent sex here on the ugly carpet of an unloved apartment, with a pair of girl's panties bearing witness. "All I want is to finish this up and get the hell out of here," he announces, dealing a death blow to the humor.

"Me too." A sigh, fingers in his hair. Fixing it almost, trying to smooth it and make him presentable again like Lavinia used to do after he'd been up to no good. Sweet old lady efforts to turn him into the good boy she wanted him to be with only spit and the palm of her hand. "But I don't want you in here." Second thoughts, shaking head. "I can't say that I want you going through any of this stuff. I don't know what you might find. Emmett and Jeff will be here soon anyways." The teenagers Bo hired to haul all this crap out of here, to charity and to the dump, and Luke figures they'll even manage to take some of it home. Bo swears they're good kids, but then again, he'd probably swear that the Duke boys were good kids once, too, and Luke can remember better. Late nights lost to drinking moonshine under the stars with other "good kids" from Hazzard, wild drives to nowhere, buckshot in the backside for bringing girls home a day late. It's a wonder no one got seriously hurt. "I'll give them a couple of extra bucks to help me go through the last of it." Great, just what teenagers need. More drinking money.

Bo not knowing what's in his own apartment might be funny if it weren't true. Worthy of a smirk, maybe, so that's what he gives it. Hard to figure out getting to his feet when they're in such cramped quarters, and the bedspread isn't a terribly sturdy handhold, but it suffices. He offers a hand to Bo before the man hurts himself trying to straighten out those giraffe legs in a too-small space.

The instinct is there in Bo's body language to put an arm around him, pull him close again. But Luke reckons he's been coddled enough.

"I'll just go out then," seems like the solution to all of their problems. At least it is now, since he didn't listen when Bo told him not to come up here in the first place. "I'll bring back lunch."

If he wants to argue against the notion, his cousin manages not to show it. Kiss on his cheek and a worried little look, but he gets himself sent off to find pizza.

Which is cold by the time he brings it back, what with how he walks instead of driving. Takes a wandering route, lets his nose be his guide until he finds the main strip where there's convenience stores belly to belly with delis, liquor stores and fast food restaurants. Three or four pizza places to choose from, and he wanders in and out of them until he finds one that serves thin crust, the kind Bo has always favored. Lets his moonshiner's sense of direction lead him back to Bo's place by a different route than the way he came.

A couple of pizza pies in the oven reheating and he watches the two teenagers shoving boxes and bags out the door at high speed. Hot dates this evening no doubt, and if they pull a muscle or two, they won't feel it until after they've had one hell of a night spending all of the money Bo gives them. Piles of junk get loaded into the pickup trucks they borrowed from their daddies, then the boys pause to down half a pizza each before they're off to the dump with promises to be back in a half hour to take the furniture to Good Will or wherever his cousin has specified that it should go.

He and Bo wait until the breeze settles behind those fast-moving kids before they get around to devouring their own pizza.

"Looks better," Luke offers. It's supposed to be a compliment on the condition of the apartment, even if it does manage imply that Bo's lived the life of a slob.

"Better than it ever did," his cousin agrees. Interesting admission, considering how it's echoingly empty in some places, and crowded with piled furniture in others. "I never much took care of the place. Didn't you bring nothing to drink?" Dry lips get smacked against each other, and there's no way those manners would be tolerated by Jesse Duke. Or Daisy, for that matter.

"You got a kitchen sink and a bathroom sink. I reckon you can figure out how to fill a glass by yourself."

Bo doesn't think he's funny, but then he wasn't trying to be. It's bad enough they're eating all this cheese and grease, they don't need soda, too.

"Fine," he finally says, when he figures out that Luke's not secretly holding a soft drink behind his back. Up and around the other side of the counter thing they've been eating off of, into the kitchen where he drinks straight from the spigot. Water running down his chin and splashes on his shirt when he stands back up to his full height.

"Ain't you pretty," Luke mutters.

"Thanks," and a sunshine smile that can't be resisted. "You don't look so bad yourself. Except for them crumbs in your beard."

Luke just smirks and ignores the provocation. Then waits until his cousin is otherwise occupied before running his fingers through the wiry hairs there.

"What do you got that needs to be loaded into the Jeep?" he asks as he wads his paper plate up into a ball, then grabs Bo's to do the same. Man never did much figure out cleaning up after himself. "We might as well get on that." They have to wait for the boys to come back for the heap of furniture anyway. Looks like it'll have to get piled pretty high into the two pickup trucks to make it out of here in one trip, but he reckons it can be managed. Not a one of them wants to spend any more time on this project than they have to.

"Couple boxes," Bo answers. "In the bedroom. Come on, it's safe enough now. I think."

"It don't matter." Because it doesn't. Seems like it was him that gave Bo a lecture, not two weeks ago, about how they both have pasts and no reason to regret them.

There's remarkably little to go. A few boxes, a suitcase or two. A bag of toiletries, and fifteen years gets boiled right down to this. In the end, Bo's walking away from his post-Hazzard life with even less than Luke did.

After the hired help comes back for their second load then struts out with a fistful of cash, after the interminable drive home with the bright headlights of too-heavy oncoming traffic in his eyes, after they unpack Bo's meager belongings, which happen to include a certain pair of boxing trunks that Luke lost track of years ago ("You looked real good in these," is the reason he gets given for how they got filched from him. "All muscle and sweat," and if Luke were one to blush, that right there would have done it), after they eat cold sandwiches and leftover potato salad, after they brush their teeth, change into shorts and squeeze into one twin bed, they're too tired to do anything more than lay there together. And somewhere around the time that Bo – sprawled out across his chest, sticky with the barely wiped away sweat of the day, the near-violent struggle between them that created it forgotten – starts to snore, Luke figures it's a good thing, even if it has left innumerable scars on both of them from the day Diane Benson strolled into their lives right up until this afternoon, that Bo is constructed out of sheer trust. He falls asleep figuring that if what he holds in his arms isn't love, then he has absolutely no idea what is.


	69. Perfect Morning

Perfect Morning

Some mornings he resents that the first thing he has to do is to go in search of Luke, but today is not one of those days. Not when he finds the quiet scene on the kitchen porch, glowing in the same yellow tones as those old photographs from their childhood that were taken with that ancient Brownie camera of Daisy's. The sun's light bends around the old oak, blades of grass, and Luke's fingers as he grips his steaming mug. The warmth of it all dances in dark curls, sneaks between bare toes. Even Luke's eyes can't help but take on some semblance of a warm hue. Must be an optical illusion – nothing can touch or diminish the intensity of blue that normally burns there.

"Morning," gets mumbled to him, even if Luke's focus is somewhere in the opposite direction. Not the horizon, exactly, just out and away.

Some mornings he searches grumpily to find Luke in the kitchen or sitting on the old sofa, maybe even brushing his teeth in the shiny new mirror that replaced the cracked one in the bathroom. He'll grouse something along the lines of _there you are_ and steal the morning kiss that somehow makes it reasonably tolerable that he woke up alone once again. Some mornings it seems to him that a man ought to awaken with everything where it was when he went to sleep, including the warmth of his bedmate. (And some mornings, when the night before has been particularly pleasant and he can still feel the imprint of Luke on his skin, when he wakes with a bravery born of the memory of tickling lips and gentle hands, he'll even dare to think of the man as his lover.)

None of those things happens this morning. There's too much beauty in what already is. Warm air, sunshine, the smell of the natural world giving birth to itself again, and Luke sitting in the middle of it all. Timeless image, really; he can think back on days that looked just like this some thirty-five years ago when they were just barefoot farm boys with fishing poles slung over their shoulders.

"Hey, Lukas," and instead of griping or kissing, he sits on the steps where Luke makes room for him by sliding his feet back and bending his knees like he's no more than a flexible child. "What you thinking?"

He half expects to hear something about meandering down to the shaded end of the pond where that big daddy of a catfish used to spend summer days, turning up his whiskered nose at worms on the ends of little boys' hooks. Then again, the fish has probably gone the way of their childhood, and he already knows what Luke's got to be thinking about anyway. Daisy's semester ended yesterday, and though she got all of her own papers and projects done a week ago, she had to stay one extra day to grade the tests of the students in her class about lichens. Or whatever it was really about, seems to him he gets corrected frequently on his ignorance of his female cousin's academic life. Which ought not be surprising to any of them – hell, he reckons he got graduated from high school by teachers who were just plenty ready to see the end of disruptive Duke kids in their classrooms. It certainly wasn't perfect attendance or good grades that earned him his diploma.

Anyway, he figures old Luke there has got to be mulling over the fact that this is their last day of reprieve before getting their heads flattened by a steam iron, or worse. He only hopes his cousin has managed to come up with a plan for how they're going to escape with their lives after they tell her about them.

"I's just wondering what we could plant out in the south forty," comes the unexpected answer. "We ain't got no experience with anything except corn and cotton."

"I didn't know you was planning on planting." And it seems like the kind of thing he ought to know, being half of the labor force that Luke no doubt intends to use for this little project.

A little shrug from where his cousin's back is leaning against the post. His eyes finally come away from the space they've been staring off into so he can focus on his fingers instead. "My hands ain't felt right all these years without no Hazzard soil caught under the nails."

Bo reckons his own hands feel best wrapped around the steering wheel of the General Lee, but when he looked down at them, if there was some dirt in those half moons under his fingernails, it would seem just about normal.

He pulls Luke's feet into his lap. Gets a funny smirk for it, but he doesn't care, not when he can lean back against the opposite post and let his thumb stroke the warm skin pulled taut over the rounded bone of an ankle. He couldn't put words to why he likes it, so he doesn't try, and he's grateful when Luke gets over the notion that it's stupid and relaxes back into contemplation of their land.

"Wouldn't be fitting not to have at least some corn," is about the only contribution Bo can make to the conversation. Aside from the desire to keep tradition – if only for Jesse's sake – he has no particular thoughts about farming or crops. He farmed because the family always had, and loved the land for its sprawl that ranged from cropland to wilderness, but he's never had the same passion for the soil that Luke does. "Peanuts?" he adds, because it's the first thing that comes to mind.

"The way I see it," Luke starts, but then his leg jerks involuntarily. A glower, and Bo moves his hand higher under the cuff of blue jeans to find the curve of calf – a steadier, firmer stroke there. He never meant to tickle in the first place; there's nothing erotic intended in the touch. Years of not being this close to Luke and now all he wants is to let his fingers roam the body under them, just to familiarize himself with the slopes and dips that he never bothered to get to know before. "The way I see it," gets slightly growled this time, a warning. _Be nice or I'll take my body back to myself_, and Bo has every intention of obeying. "Ain't nothing we grow going to turn a profit."

He'd chalk it up to Luke Duke pessimism if he could, but it's just the truth they've always known. Even in better times, before the competition of corporate farming took over a lot of what local families used to be able to produce and sell, the Dukes never made any real money off of raw crops. No, they had to take them out into the woods and brew them into something a little special if they wanted some cash in their pockets.

"You reckon you could still cook up a batch of moonshine?" That question prompts a look that calls him stupid without the utterance of even a word. "I ain't suggesting it," he adds. "I was just remembering." Careless sunshine days and wild reckless nights and it's almost hard to believe they're the same two boys who used to run moonshine, slinking up mountain passes faster than a freight train about to jump the tracks.

Luke takes a sip of his coffee before putting the mug down on the porch beside him and snaking his hand into Bo's hair. It doesn't stay for more than the second it takes to convey that Luke's sharing those same images – mostly dark but with streaks of light so bright thy could just about burn a man's corneas – with him.

"If we can't earn a living off what we grow," is Luke redirecting them from memories too intense to be studied closely, the kind that stir up questions of who they were born to be versus who they became. Bo slips his hand back out of those jeans then slides across the floorboards so he's just a little closer, hand resting on Luke's knee now. "We might as well grow what we like. Maybe what we can share with the Children's Home or something." Which is what the orphanage gets called these days. Not the same rambling old house crammed full of kids anymore. It's smaller, sadder, gray, and accommodates only the children that can't be doled out to foster homes because they are too old, too rough, or too sick to be cared for outside of a group setting. If anything, it needs more support than ever.

"Onions," Bo suggests, gets a sour face for that. But just because Luke doesn't want to eat them doesn't mean they couldn't be useful to the Children's Home. Or to Bo for that matter, because when they cook down enough they are a key ingredient in one hell of a red sauce, and Luke seems to forget that they are even there.

"I was thinking tomatoes." All right, Bo can definitely come up with some good uses for those. "Peppers?" Sure, but this is starting to sound dangerously like a garden, not crops. His hand finds Luke's and takes hold, but it's awkward with how they're sitting at right angles to one another, so he lets it wander up that muscled forearm.

"Watermelon," he declares. "Kids love watermelon."

"And so do you," Luke adds, with that lopsided smile that has always seen right through him. "Too late to get started on most of them now. We could do some fall corn though. Indian corn, maybe."

"If you want." It's a perfect morning, smells like sunshine and turned dirt, and Luke could talk him into planting elephants if he had the inclination. Of course, he's not sure he'd be game for the harvesting.

His hand has made it all the way up to Luke's shoulder; there are fingers stroking across his elbow. "I figure we ought to tell Daisy about the farming we're planning to do first." Ah, of course this seemingly idle morning chatter about a distant future has been leading somewhere more imminent. Luke's been scheming after all. "And I also reckon you'd best make up a batch of your fried chicken."

Really? He catches Luke's eye, asks the question silently. He was, after all, rather looking forward to some down home Daisy Duke cooking.

That hand on his elbow grips more tightly, pulling him closer. He lets his own fingers slide up into the soft hair at the nape of Luke's neck.

"I reckon," Luke informs him. "It would be a good thing if she didn't get too close to the pots and pans tomorrow."

Bo laughs, slides closer, even if the movement just about bends the body that's sprawled across his lap in half. Kiss, and, "Good morning, Luke," he finally says.


	70. Fried Chicken and Delayed Confessions

Fried Chicken and Delayed Confessions

He cuffs the back of Bo's head – _get up, lazybones_ – when he hears the whining drone of that motorcycle Daisy has taken to riding. But the swat is no more of an authentic hit than Bo's slouching posture in one of the hard-backed kitchen chairs is a genuine sign of relaxation. His cousin's nervous, in a lip-nibbling, finger-drumming sort of a way. Still, it's not like hiding in here, where the smell of fried chicken and barbeque sauce is nearly enough to make a man pass out from hunger, is going to help any. In fact, not going outside to greet a returning family member is a breech of the southern manners they were raised on, and will allow Daisy swatting privileges on principle. "Come on," he encourages, because Bo never was one to surrender himself to the strap, or even the purse that's heavy enough to be loaded with bricks, without Luke by his side.

Long fingers catch his wrist so he offers Bo a hand up. His cousin comes, keeps on coming until he gets the kiss that Luke knows full well was his ulterior motive all along. And he reckons it's for the best, really. One more to tide Bo over, because he doesn't expect there'll be any more of that until they get behind the closed door of their bedroom at the end of the night. And even then, Daisy will only be one thin wall away from them.

He leads the way to the kitchen door, Bo's arm slung around his shoulders. Despite the dark look Luke gives him, Bo doesn't relinquish his hold. And in truth, it feels pretty damned familiar to be held onto this way; this exact gesture only punctuated most every day of the Duke boys' younger lives. So he lets it be, because doing so means that at least they'll make it out onto the porch before that droning engine dies.

Dust flies everywhere, and she wouldn't be Daisy Duke if she didn't pull those extra few skidding loops. But even through the fingers shielding their eyes, the Duke men can see two bodies clinging tightly together on the back of that big, old black hog Daisy's taken to riding. Funny how she finally gave up her pretty little ways after L.D. left her; where once was pristine white, everything's now black. Including her leather jacket and the helmets obscuring both her and her passenger's faces.

Not that it matters, they know the build of the body and the tilt of the head even before that gap toothed grin reveals itself.

But first there's Daisy, helmet whipping off with a hair-flying flourish the likes of which would have made a younger version of Bo jealous. Now that he's too grown up for that, he lets go of Luke so he can manage a lopsided run to where she's getting off the bike, and whisks her up into his arms.

"Easy, easy now," she warns him, but there's no point. A hug from Bo Duke can put an unsuspecting person into traction. Then again, Daisy's no novice to these things. A sloppy, lipstick-red, kiss on his cheek, then those fingernails dig into that soft skin between collarbone and shoulder blade, and Bo knows to put her down. Arm around her, he escorts their female cousin to where Luke is descending the steps to greet her. Shuttles her right along, all but shoves her to him as if Luke's the one that was full of dread at seeing her. He gives her a gentle hug and gets squeezed mercilessly in return – there's clearly no right way to embrace their female cousin.

"Look what I found, wandering the streets of Hazzard," Daisy announces as she lets him go. Finally, the man comes off the back of her bike, slow and ginger, but then ain't any of them as young as they once were.

"Cooter," Luke greets, sticking out a hand to shake.

But Bo gets there first. "Cooter!" comes out in that same drooling-grin of a voice that the boy used to save for the female half of Hazzard, particularly the young, skinny ones. Yet another frighteningly constrictive Bo Duke hug gets doled out and Luke can only shake his head. The one-time mechanic is suddenly Bo's savior, or so he thinks. As if he could cling to the man's knees and keep him here forever as a shield against the things they need to share with their kin, as if Cooter isn't next on the short list of people they've agreed to tell. Oh, sure, he'll provide a temporary reprieve because they can't tell him until Daisy already knows, but his arrival is not a particularly favorable development.

"I hope it's all right," their friend says, breaking loose from Bo and accepting Luke's outstretched hand. "I know you wasn't expecting me, but your cousin there, she kind of insisted."

Of course she did, and of course he didn't exactly resist, either. The Dukes' dinner table has always been one of Cooter's favorite respites from the slim pickings of his own humble kitchen. The man might have pretended at growing up, put on a fancy suit and moved north for a few years to play politics, but he's the same half-feral Davenport that he ever was.

"It's fine," Luke assures him and Bo slings an arm around those shoulders in reinforcement of the words. "We got plenty to eat."

Daisy makes a face at that, but she shouldn't. She's been forewarned that she's off-duty, at least for today, as far as cooking chores are concerned. "Cletus will be along directly," seems like some kind of challenge she's lobbing at Bo's cooking talents or Luke's planning skills, but it doesn't work. Just make Bo's grin get that much wider and sillier.

"The more the merrier," he declares.

— — — —

"Mandy," Bo answers his unasked question. It's taken some time for the five of them to get past the hugging and kissing, for declarations of who has lost weight (and hair), for them to stop acting like it's been more than six weeks since they were last all together. After that come struggles over who should fire up the grill and which of them ought to carry out the food and plates, and then there's Daisy's clucking tongue at the assumption that there's no way a Duke meal could be served without her at the handle of the mixing spoon. But they've outsmarted her (and themselves, really) by making enough food for half of Hazzard, probably, while she only brought two of the town's population with her. Though, Rosco, it seems, may still show up if he can get away from whatever pointless silliness he thinks he's engaging in at the courthouse.

Luke raises his eyebrow in acknowledgement of the girl who is responsible for the wonderfully tangy coleslaw on his plate. Only a few minutes earlier he learned that the pork barbeque is courtesy of Annemarie, and somewhere back there came the reminder that fried chicken was Heather's specialty.

Cooter's snickering low and dirty like the wild boy he used to be, because he figures he's got the inside scoop on the subtext of the half-spoken conversation between the two Duke boys. Meanwhile Daisy's glowering because she knows she doesn't.

"She's the one that taught him how to make coleslaw," Luke helpfully supplies. After all, he's the one that has to sit next to her, and if she gets into a swatting mood, his head's the closest. Bo's straight across from him, looking like he'd like to drag Luke off behind the barn and give him what for, but a fight with Bo, at least, would be fair. Daisy knows he's not allowed to hit her back.

"It's mighty good," Cooter throws in from where he's lounging in a lawn chair in the general vicinity of the end of the table. Not close enough to eat like a properly trained adult, he's got a plate on his lap and a bottle of beer by his right foot. "And I bet the recipe's not the only thing he took from that gal," gets followed by a crude wink. Daisy giggles behind her hand in some kind of knowing approval of their friend's point of view.

"Heather," Luke spits from between gritted teeth as Bo tries to make up his mind between looking proud of his reputation and remorseful at the way it's clearly irking Luke. "Taught him how to make the fried chicken."

"It's mighty tasty, too," the occasionally diplomatic former senator says, eyeballing the whole bunch of them while his brain struggles to catch up with the disparate moods of the Duke cousins.

"Heather who?" Daisy demands to know, suddenly affronted. After all, the fried chicken made by Daisy Duke has always been well-known as a county-wide treasure and sometime aphrodisiac. Competition for the title of best chicken in town must be tolerated with a certain amount of stoicism when it comes from Bo. Whoever this Heather woman is, Daisy's got it in for her now. And, oddly, Luke finds himself on his female cousin's side of it.

"Ain't nobody you know," Bo answers uncomfortably. Wise man, giving no names. Even if the woman's never been in Hazzard and never will be, it's best that Daisy has no clues about where to find her.

"I've always been partial to Daisy's fried chicken myself," is Cletus's way of keeping the peace. Or maybe it's more of that ongoing little puppy-love crush he never quite gave up on. Either way, it makes Daisy's chin come up in pride as she looks across the table at Bo. Then again, the deputy's licking breadcrumbs off his fingers (and that right there might explain how he never came to find himself a serious girlfriend) from a drumstick that was fried by Bo.

"Here, here," Cooter pipes up, lifting his beer bottle off the ground and clinking it against glasses that are invisible to anyone but him, in a toast. "Though Bo's is just as tasty." The man's spent too much time in the middle of the road.

There's a faceoff happening, dark blue eyes clashing with each other, as both of his cousins' Duke pride starts to assert itself.

"Luke," Bo says, but his focus never shifts from Daisy's face, and his chin never lowers from its haughty jut. "Who makes better fried chicken, me or Daisy?"

If it were fifteen years ago, he'd engage himself in a mental debate over starched shorts versus a sulky roommate. If it were fifteen years ago, Uncle Jesse would step in the middle and say something careful about how they both made fine, fine foods and they should all just thank the Lord for providing them with chicken in the first place. If it were fifteen years ago, he'd be saved by the whine of a siren and urgent need to squeeze out of the kitchen window to make a mad dash to the General. If it were fifteen years ago, Bo Duke would be laughing at the notion of competing with his girl cousin over which of them was better at the feminine art of cooking.

Sadly, it's not fifteen years ago, it's right now, and there are four sets of eyes on him, challenging him to come up with the right answer.

"No offense Daisy," he says, and offers a silent prayer that somehow she won't take any, "but I'm partial to Bo's." It might get him killed, but given his current circumstances, it's the only answer he can give. Bo stops short of sticking his tongue out at their cousin, but barely. "But ain't nobody can touch your apple pie, sweetheart."

Daisy, thankfully, has the good manners to say, "Thank you, sugar," then let the other men compliment her baking skills. Soon enough Cletus gets to reminiscing about the church bake sales of years past, when Daisy would make dozens of pies and he'd buy them all, and Luke figures it's safe to move.

"Another beer?" he offers as he stands. Daisy and Cletus wave him off, but Bo signals as to how he could stand one, and Cooter nods in agreement. "Real smart," Luke hisses at the brilliant blonde one as he passes, and winds up with a tag along cousin following behind him.

"What?" Bo whispers back when they've crossed over to the shade of the old oak, where the cooler filled with clinking bottles sits at the roots.

"You reckon," Luke answers as he pulls one out, screws off the lid and hands it to Bo, "that put her into a good mood?" Opens another and hands it over as well. Pulls a third out and stands there surveying the conversation over at the picnic table. Daisy's letting herself be mollified for now, but those eyebrows of hers are down, and she's plotting. Probably working over in her head right now exactly the most unpleasant way to reap her revenge for wounded pride. "Just for that," he mutters, "you get the pleasure of telling her."

Bo puts the brown bottle to his lips and swallows deeply. Yeah, Luke can sympathize with that.


	71. A Demonstration for the Disbeliever

A Demonstration for the Disbeliever

"Some plan you had," he mutters as he steps up behind his cousin. "Keep her away from the pots and pans, you said." Quiet enough that only Luke can hear it over the sound of running water. Or only Luke gets the details. Daisy must hear something, because she looks over her shoulder at them from where she's standing in front of the sink.

Sheepish smirk blooms across Luke's face, followed by a nervous hand making a mess of the curls at the back of his head. He waits for their female cousin to return her attention to the dishes left over from their daylong eating event the likes of which hasn't happened on Duke property since before their uncle died, then picks himself a kitchen chair to sit down in. Man is determined to stick it out until such time as Daisy gives her full attention to the confession that Bo has no burning desire to make.

But there's no escaping, not when he knows his cousin won't follow him up to their bedroom, will just sit here monitoring Daisy's progress until she gives up on her feminine prerogative to clean up after the men in her life, and turns her attention to him. So Bo selects his own hard-backed chair from which to keep a vigil; neither exactly next to Luke nor across, but at the head of the table. Tries to behave like the man who used to sit here taught him to, still and patient, but he can't help it if one of his legs starts to jiggle with the instinct to run from this crowded kitchen at high speed. And if it's only one small step from fidgeting to knocking his knee on the table with a resounding thud, well, that's not his fault either.

Oh, but he's got Daisy's squint-eyed attention now. A look over her shoulder that could put a cursing sailor to shame, even if her hands never stop their work.

"You boys," she says. "Are up to something. You're just walking trouble." Which isn't entirely true, they're more of the sitting still kind of trouble. "Just get out of my kitchen before you get to breaking something."

It occurs to him to point out how it's not exactly Daisy's kitchen anymore, how she's only planning to be here for a week before the summer semester starts up at school, but Luke's head is already shaking at him. Then again, when his cousin stands, he also offers his hand. Light grip to pull him up, and a thumb stroking across his knuckles. _Settle down_, it says, like it's that easy. His fingers still held by Luke's, he heads for the door, and it's probably for the best that Daisy's deeply engrossed in the act of scrubbing barbecue sauce off of the same plates she's washed for the better part of her life. Must know every scrape and nick in them by now, must've figured out the best attack plan for cleaning each one. Heck, if he knows her at all (and sometimes he still figures that he's the one who knows her best) Bo figures she's long ago given each one a name and assigned it a personality.

Out onto the relatively cool air of the porch, where Luke sprawls against his favorite post, leaving Bo to lean on the other one, the length of their legs finding open spaces in which to rest. Quiet between them, just listening to the sound of metal on glass as Daisy sorts through silverware for the next cup or plate she wants to clean. Focused on nothing at all but the familiar cant of the farmyard gently sloping toward the fence. That is, until Luke's thumb strokes across his knee, bringing him back to the here and now where he's apparently started pulling at his thumbnail with his teeth. Torn edge, and he might as well keep on pulling, except for that shaking head of Luke's again. So he forces his hand to rest in his lap and settles back to waiting. Luke would probably be proud to hear him say how it likely would have been better if they'd been able to get this over with hours ago.

The door creaks and suddenly Daisy's out there with them. Two strides and she plops herself on the boards right between them, forcing a quick shuffling of feet to make room for her.

"Ain't this nice?" she asks, that wide smile from her youth spreading across her face. "Home again, sitting here with my two favorite cousins."

Most likely, it's supposed to be funny. "Real nice," Luke smirks back at her.

"Me and Luke's together," Bo blurts, and he's not exactly to blame for the fact that it comes flying out that way. It's been bottled up all day; the uncorking was bound to be a bit violent.

"I can see that, sweetie," Daisy answers with a placating little smile that's meant to prove just how smart she is. Her eyes meet Luke's in shared amusement at their fool of a baby cousin, and that just about does him in.

"I mean," is his next attempt, less rushed, more deliberate, a touch perturbed. "Me and Luke's going to live here together. Like Lavinia and Jesse did."

"You quit the circuit?" isn't the point at all, leave it to Daisy to get amazed at all the wrong parts of this thing. Then again, maybe he should have told her that part a couple of weeks ago.

"Yes," he says evenly, pointedly ignoring the amused way in which Luke's regarding him. "I did. So I could come here and live with Luke." And he's just starting to rethink the brilliance of moving in with a man that would sit back and watch him suffer like this. No, not just watch, closer to relish. "Like Lavinia and Jesse did. And Grandma and Grandpa Duke."

He'd appreciate the light in her eyes, if she wasn't using them to laugh at him. Oh, she might have that forefinger of hers plastered across her lips to keep the giggles from escaping, but she hardly needs to make a sound for him to know what she's thinking.

"Not exactly like Grandma and Grandpa," she asserts, so damn sure of herself. She looks to Luke again, expecting him to join her in mocking the fool things Bo keeps saying. Gets met by that lopsided little smile and raised eyebrows.

"Exactly like Grandma and Grandpa," Luke informs her. Seems to take a perverse pleasure in saying the kind of words that ought to make all three of them cringe.

Their female cousin laughs outright then. "You boys," she squeezes out when she can find the breath. "Have such a terrible sense of humor." Knee-slappingly amused now, she giggles like the little girl she used to be before that summer when her legs grew and her bedroom suddenly started to smell like perfume and baby powder. One hand comes to rest on each of their shoulders again so she can shove at them. Must be expecting to get shoved back, possibly followed by one of them hollering 'April fools!' even if it is mid-May.

"We're together," Bo reinforces.

"All right," Daisy answers, sobering, lips and eyebrows both turning down. "It ain't all that funny that you got to keep saying it. You had your joke."

Luke shrugs, reaches around her to find Bo's arm. His hand slides up to the shoulder, then neck and pulls gently. Bo comes, as much out of habit as anything. Certainly he doesn't put any thought into what he does. Which is to accept a kiss from Luke. Nothing serious, just lips on lips. Doesn't even close his eyes, he just rolls them to the right to watch their sweet cousin's mouth open wide with unspoken objection. The kiss is over before she finds the words.

"That ain't funny, Bo, Luke," she hollers, shoving herself out from between them and up to her feet. "That ain't funny at all." Red, her face is the same color it was the day they ran her car off of Kissing Cliff, it's got that same tortured twist to it that she had when they tried to get between her and Jamie Lee Hogg. "I ain't," she hurls over he shoulder, hair flying as she flounces toward the front door.

"Now Daisy," he tries to interrupt, but that's not smart and never has been.

"I ain't," she shouts over him and his silly objections. "Going to talk to neither of you until you stop fooling around." The screen door screams its own protest at her abuse, but she doesn't listen to it, either. Just lets it slap shut behind her as she storms off – if her pounding feet are any indication – toward the living room.

Luke leans back against his post again, hands behind his head. "Well," he smirks. "That went well."

"Luke," he complains, and if it comes out as a whine, well he reckons he's earned the right to sound that way.

"All right, all right," his big cousin answers, pushing himself to his feet before offering a hand down to help him up as well. Bo takes hold, and doesn't let go as they head toward the door to their house, and certain doom.


	72. Combat Missions

Combat Missions

"I ain't half surprised," is unconvincing. The girl was flabbergasted. She spent the better part of the night with her fingers hovering over her ears, getting ready to blot out everything they tried to explain to her. Eventually she declared she'd had about as much as she could stand for one night and retreated to her room.

He and Bo had done the same, though not without bumps and hitches. His youngest cousin never did know when to give up the fight, or just let it rest for awhile. That same never-give-up attitude that brought him so many pieces of hardware to stack on their dressers, with shiny gold-plated cars on the top and his name emblazoned across the front, but Daisy's not a NASCAR race. She's a Duke, and she knows when to withdraw so that she can live by the cardinal rule of Dukes not fighting Dukes.

And even after he convinced Bo to walk away from the battle for a few hours, his cousin's body was still spoiling for a brawl. Twitching and jerking and refusing to settle down, regardless of how Luke pulled him under the covers to share the warmth his body had to offer, despite the soothing fingers he ran through that blonde hair. All his usual tricks to make the man sleep failed spectacularly because Bo refused to give up a fight he was sure he could win. Luke could sympathize with that, but he also knew, better than his younger cousin ever would, how badly sleep was needed in order to have half a chance of remaining standing once all the bullets and arrows had been loosed.

"Shh," he'd found himself whispering, which was foolish, just led to him softly singing ridiculous lullabies about mockingbirds and babies that shouldn't say a word. Didn't work, just made Bo sigh and shift around some more in his arms. Somewhere around the point that he was wondering whether a good blow to the head wouldn't do the trick, there was a giant yawn that marked the last gasp of his cousin's struggle, and soon after that, there was peace. Of a relative sort.

Which, Luke figured, was what he needed. Bo's brain worked only backwards, stewing over what had already happened. Never could think ahead to a potential future, nor plan how he might control or change it. That fell, as always, to Luke. Who couldn't come up with a single damned way to make this any better. It wasn't like they'd totaled Daisy's car, more like totaled the family as she knew it. A shiny new Jeep made the single-minded love of a powerful yellow Roadrunner disappear into thin air, but there wasn't anything he and Bo could buy or give their cousin that would make this any easier for her to bear.

He stayed as long as Bo's somewhat fitful sleep required, through kicks and twitches, and whining sighs that escaped like ghosts of words caught up in his chest. Kept them both balanced on what had come to feel like the smallest sliver of a bed, until the snores finally set in. A lifetime, give or take, of sleeping in close quarters with this man, and Luke reckoned he knew when his light switch finally got turned all the way off.

Quiet and careful then, he slipped out from under that dead weight. Down the kitchen, because if he had to be awake at this hour, about the only thing that would make him civil when the sun came up was a hell of a lot of coffee. Just about the time it got to brewing, bitter smell of grounds evolving into a fine, fresh-roasted aroma, Daisy showed up. Hair everywhere, baby doll nightgown like she'd always worn wrinkled around her hips. Bleary-eyed and still smoldering with the anger that she'd never allowed to dissipate. A cup of coffee was about all he could offer her. Might have tried a kiss to her cheek if he thought it was wanted; found himself halfway wishing Bo was awake and down here after all. He'd hug her whether she wanted him to or not, make her forgive them both on the basis of his smile and the shared warmth of close space. And though he had always been able to use his blonde charm to bend the will of just about any female, the close bond he had with Daisy predated hormones and height, went all the way back to when he'd been a awkward, stumbling, buck-toothed boy. Luke never had the first clue when it came to their girl cousin.

"Or maybe I'm just surprised you boys didn't get around to this sooner," she says, as she keeps picking over what's gotten under her skin like a splinter. Poking and pushing and if she sheds some blood or infects herself, the guilt can easily be laid at the feet of her cousins. "Back when you was living here, or ooh—" something's paining her, some new realization. "When you went off to NASCAR." It's a question disguised as a statement. _How long have you boys been keeping secrets from me?_

"Wouldn't have worked back then," he swears. "I would have kept him on too short a leash."

Stupid thing to say; Daisy nearly spits out the demure little sip of coffee she's just taken. She doesn't want to hear that, and it's not even exactly right. But he can hardly be blamed for lame explanations of things he's only now realizing. Like how closely he watched over Bo back then, and how it must've stuck in the boy's craw. Not every day, obviously, mostly it seemed to work out. But then there were the times it made him rebel, sent him onto the dance floor or out to Hazzard Pond with a precisely chosen and wooed girl, the kind that would leave Luke stewing in his own jealousy.

Not that he would have called it that at the time. He'd grouse about the blonde idiot (and while it was true that Bo was both blonde and an idiot, it wasn't Duke honesty that made Luke say it) then make a very clear case for why the relationship would fail. Funny thing, when he turned out to be right, how it never made him any happier.

When they were younger, he went about loving Bo all wrong. But there's no reason to tell Daisy that right now. All she wants to hear is, "Ain't nothing started between us until recent."

"When?" she asks, because she's a glutton for punishment, not to mention a once-upon-a-time gossip. She wants details, or needs them, even if she ought to know better about asking questions she really doesn't have the heart to hear the answers to.

"Recent," he reiterates deliberately. He and Bo don't have secrets, but they do have their privacy, and it seems to him it'd be a wise choice to hold onto what little they've got.

"Since before or after Gabriela?" Or maybe it's not particulars she seeks, but some assurance that her youngest cousin isn't the kind of cruel man that would deliberately toy with a woman like that. And honestly, Luke has no real answers when it comes to what Bo was doing out in Los Angeles.

"After, mostly." He sighs, there's no point in being coy about it. "Three years ago. We kissed then."

"Before Jesse died. Here? You boys is braver than I thought." Because if Jesse had caught them kissing, he would have pulled out his strap, even if trying to give them a single lick would probably have killed him right on the spot.

"I'd as soon," and he's hissing at her, not a good choice. "You didn't go announcing in front of Bo how Jesse wouldn't approve. He might or might not have, but we'll never know and it don't do Bo no good to go dwelling on it." Then again, he can't help but want to avoid a repeat of that broken-hearted little scene up in the graveyard.

"All right," his girl cousin agrees, goes back to sipping at her coffee. Oh, but she's not done, won't be even close to done until she's picked this thing between him and Bo apart, looking for what she's missed out on, seeking out signs that it's working or not, looking for hints and clues that got past her the first time around.

"Look, I'm sorry about Gabriela and all, but Bo done made up his mind all on his own. Hell, I tried to send him back to her a bunch of times." And he reckons he was a good enough sport, tried with all his might to be fair to both Bo and the girl back then, that he has earned the right not to go rehashing it all now.

"I bet you did." There's a sound to follow, nothing big enough to be called a giggle, closer to an amused little yelp.

"What's that supposed to mean?" It's too early to be getting angry like this. It's still full on dark out there, and there aren't any chores to be stomping off to as an excuse to escape. Besides, he can't go slamming doors and waking Bo up.

"I just figure ain't neither of you really going to give up girls. Especially not Bo." Another bark of a laugh.

"I'd also appreciate it if you didn't say that again," comes out from between gritted teeth.

And that's not fair, really. She's scared and worried. She's just a Duke, looking after her kin, with no idea how to go about it. Not when it's her two cousins, holding each other's hearts in their hands, and one false move could deal a crushing blow to them both.

"There ain't gonna be no girls. Bo's the one made me swear to that." There's more he should add, about how he never really wanted to get back with girls either, how he was just trying to keep their privacy safe from the prying eyes of Hazzard. "He's more mature than you think, Daisy," he says instead, because it seems more important. _I ain't your baby cousin no more _echoes through his head. He has no idea how many times he's heard it recently, but he knows for sure that until this moment, he never really listened to the words. But they're true; Bo has stayed steady while Luke did his best to rock the world around them. "I tried – half the time I was a jerk – but I tried to push him away since—" hell, he started the shoving the second his cousin dared to crawl over to the passenger side of the car and kiss him, years ago. "For a long time. He knows what he wants."

"Wants. You want him and he wants you, but what about love, Luke?"

He's got answers to that one, too, whole volumes of things he could say, but he doesn't get the chance.

"You ought to know better than that, Daisy," is Bo's testy interjection into their little conversation, as he walks into the space between them. "You too, Luke. I'm dang sick of having to go looking for you in the mornings." Well, that's news that could have waited for a better moment to get blurted at him. And Bo knows it, too, because he turns back to their female cousin. "You know ain't nothing me and Luke's ever done that wasn't based on love. We's only loved each other since forever. Just like you and Enos, and if you got to go fixing someone's love life, maybe it ought to be your own. Best you go off to Los Angeles yourself, and leave me and Luke alone."

Well. That ought to ensure that Luke's attempts at diplomacy dissolve into an out-and-out war. And he's out of practice for combat missions.


	73. Secret Club

Secret Club

Once upon a time, so long ago that he can't swear to its origins (but he'd bet it started that year when Luke dragged his feet all the way to first grade) he and Daisy had a secret club with only two members. Most of what they did is long forgotten, but there were rules and promises and pacts they had to keep. Like never talking about what they did in their clubhouse (which wasn't anything more than the space beneath Daisy's bed – hard to imagine now how easily they fit under there) nor ever expanding the membership. Just two young Duke cousins and a handful of dolls.

He never broke his word – at least he doesn't think he did – about secret diversions in which Daisy's role was the mother and he played the father. Taboo words 'mother' and 'father' were, back in those days when all they wanted was to be like other kids who had a Mama and a Daddy instead of an Aunt and Uncle. Must've made parents seem like mythical creatures to two orphans, because in the games they played the parents had magical powers, at least one of which was immortality. No, he's pretty sure he never blabbed a single word of those games to anybody.

Not that Luke would have been listening at the time if he'd tried to tell. When his so-grown-up cousin wasn't at school there was homework and chores, big boy activities that Bo wasn't invited along on. But if he was lucky there'd be an hour of so before dinner when he and Luke would get sent outside to run off their energy. Totally different games of pretend took place then, involving balls and bats and roaring crowds. And at the end of the night, whether he found himself in Luke's bed or his own, he had no urge to tell tales of secret clubs in which he was the Vice President, because someone had to be President and that was Daisy.

He never thought about it as choosing between two cousins, but that's probably what it amounted to in the end. Somewhere in the subsequent years, he took to spending every possible minute with Luke, and those hours lost to the dusky gloom shaped by uneven blankets on a sloppily made bed faded away. But not before Daisy followed Luke off to school, leaving Bo to fend for himself through boring days for one final year. He's not sure now, who left whom.

Still, in moments like this one, when the porch light is throwing striped shadows across Daisy's face, he can see the remnants of an excited little girl making him pinkie-swear that he'll never tell another living soul about made up games played belly down amongst dust bunnies.

"I—" He nudges at Luke's shoulder, an unspoken request that the man shove over. His wish gets complied with, almost too well. Seems like his cousin has designs on moving over to the next chair, or maybe exiting the scene all together, but Bo's got no intentions of letting that happen. Arm across those tightly muscled shoulders to keep him close; two grown men sharing a chair that's hardly big enough for one. But they're strong, and so is this piece of furniture that predates Jesse but is still standing up to abuse after all these years – between them, they can stay upright, even if Luke's eyes do roll at the stupidity of it all. "I'm sorry. What I said about you and Enos, that ain't none of my business." Even if it kind of is, considering how long they've all known the one-time bumbling boy turned big city cop.

"You're dang right it ain't," gets snapped back at him as Daisy eyeballs the way he and Luke are sitting. Shouldn't faze her a whole heck of a lot when it comes right down to it. The Duke boys have shared tight spaces all of their lives, from their bedroom to the General, but then they've never shared a kiss in front of her until this evening. "And I don't want to hear about how you and Luke being together ain't none of my business, because it is."

Somewhere during those secret club days, in the muffled quiet of their blanket-draped clubhouse, he might have kissed Daisy. Little boy kisses, and when those were done and they'd both wiped the cooties off their lips, he might have promised to marry her someday. And to have at least two real babies to replace the dolls that never could manage to stay sitting upright without the prop of a book behind them. He might or might not have realized that Dukes had a precedent for cousin marrying cousin, and he's not sure how much it would have mattered. Back then it was him and Daisy, Mama and Daddy, forever.

"I reckon it is," he sighs. "But it don't have to affect you none." Hell, she's got a degree to finish and boring classes to teach, and there's no need for Daisy to waste even one brain cell worrying about him and Luke.

"Don't affect me none. We's family, Bo, or does you and Luke being together mean I ain't part of this here clan no more?" Hot little goad there.

"No, it don't," Luke answers her softly. "It just means – we ain't got no plans on hurting you, Daisy. We won't go doing nothing in front of you." And it's a good thing that oath comes from Luke, what with how he's the one that did the kissing just inches away from her face. "About the only difference will be how we ain't going to be seeing girls no more."

"The only difference." It's a sneer, and it's not pretty. Right about now, their cousin is about as spitting mad at the both of them as she has ever been. "The only difference is that you two are gonna be—" Oh, but she stops herself right there on the precipice of things that are too ugly to say. "What about kids, Luke? Can't neither of you have kids doing – that."

Bo's grip on his cousin tightens down against the flight risk that Luke represents whenever he gets angry enough to hurt someone. Sure, the man claims not to want children, and it might even be true, most of the time. But Bo saw that indulgent little smile he got when those boys of his in Montana teased him, watched how his jumpers respected him just like all three of the Duke cousins once respected their Uncle Jesse. And he saw how it hurt to break those bonds Luke had spent years building. His cousin might not want children, but pointing out how he's never going to have any is hitting him below the belt.

"You ain't exactly had no kids, neither," he hisses, hitting her right back even if he knows he's not supposed to. "You was the one was supposed to do that, not us." At least that was the expectation, back when all three of them were barely past pimples and growth spurts.

"That ain't none of your business, neither," she snaps back at him, a little too raw.

"I'll grant you that," Luke says, tilting his head to catch the corner of Bo's eye. Some hint there that he should apologize before Daisy sets to crying.

"Me too," he says, "if you'll agree that it ain't none of your business whether me and Luke have kids." Now that just came out wrong, and both his cousins are smirking at him for it. Probably picturing him being the one with the distended belly, because everyone knows Luke Duke could never get an ounce of fat on him. "You know what I mean," he says and swears inwardly that he'll never bother to defend the man again. "Daisy, you know what Jesse always said about casting the first stone." He's tired of dodging the stones that are getting flung at him and Luke, but maybe more than that, he's not enjoying flinging them right back.

"Don't you go quoting Uncle Jesse," and there's a shift in the body under his arm. Luke leans forward, locking eyes with Daisy. Some kind of a challenge there that makes Daisy's chin lift in defiance. "Or the Bible at me. Not about this. Not unless you reckon on going into the church and declaring your intentions about until death do you part."

He lets go of Luke then, stumbles to his feet, finger pointing at her. "'Til death do us part, and I don't need no preacher to pronounce us," husband and husband? "Married, neither. Me and Luke's together forever and you can't go telling me that you promising to stay with L.D. in front of the church and the Lord mattered one bit, not when—"

Luke's pulling on his arm, straightening it out of its point, tugging him back down into the chair. Which he has all to himself now, seems like his husband has moved one chair over and out of the line of fire.

"Daisy," Luke says, as Bo flops backward against the hard seatback. He's angry, he's ashamed of himself, and there's no way of working out which of those two things is eating at him worse right now. "It ain't gonna matter if we got your blessing or not. We's already figured out how miserable we made each other for all them years we was apart. We ain't got any plans on doing that to each other again. We don't need your blessing. But if you could see your way around to offering it, well, we'd be mighty obliged."

Only Luke. His closest kin right there across the table from him, and he talks to her almost like a stranger he's just met, someone who has picked up his dropped wallet. _Mighty obliged, ma'am._

Then again, Daisy's head hangs like maybe she's ashamed of herself, too. "All right, I'll think on it." Then it comes up again and her eyes flash at them. _Don't get your hopes up_, they say. "I'll sleep on it," she corrects herself. "It's too early to be up anyways."

His thoughts exactly. But he got to missing the warmth of Luke's body, the steady breathing and the sense that, no matter how cramped they were, he was protected from the looming edges of the mattress and the hard floor below.

"Good night," Daisy says, rising and carrying her empty mug to the sink, running water into it before heading out of the kitchen.

It's then that a hand comes to his face, loosely curled fist, knuckles brushing his cheek before the palm opens and settles on the back of his neck. Luke comforting him, like he knows that up until tonight Bo has belonged to a secret club of two, and he's just relinquished his membership in order to stay with the man he loves.


	74. Leaving a Mark

Leaving a Mark

It might just have been wiser for the two of them to have bent their heads to Daisy right after she pulled into their driveway, then handed her a frying pan to hit them with. Oh, sure, it would have hurt and more than that it would have been embarrassing to let Cooter witness her doing it. But if she'd taken a swing or two at them, let her fists fly when they wanted to, they might have half a chance of being more than the isolated bodies, revolving around the house each in their own orbit, startled when gravity brings any two of them together. For three solid days, and it'd be driving him crazy, except it's something to do.

Could be he understands Daisy's furtive need for violence, maybe more than the woman herself does. Dukes were born and raised for action; enforce calm on them, make them hold their temper or maintain their feminine grace, and they have no choice but to close in on themselves. He can't really blame her.

Or Bo, who he still gets close time with in the nights. Pent up little kisses, forced to die back into nothingness, because just a thin wall away lies their tense cousin, like as not listening for creaking, rocking sounds, and she doesn't have half an idea how much noise Bo can make when they get going.

"Close your eyes, Luke." Or when he's just complaining. Whining, more like, as if Daisy being home has brought back the brat in him. Luke takes the hint, rolls onto his side, making room for Bo to settle against him. Seems like the closest thing they find to peace is when they spoon themselves together, Luke's arm around Bo's waist and his cousin feels safest then. "Not like that." Except tonight he's particularly grumpy, and apparently Luke's an annoying fool. "When we kiss, close your eyes."

Ah, turns out it's Bo that's the fool, annoying or otherwise. "What do you care?" he asks, because he has to. It would make sense, maybe, if he was being told to close his lips (or open them more) because at least that part of them touches. His eyes – well, if Bo's eyes are closed what difference does it make to him that Luke's are not? How does he even know? Unless he's opening his own eyes, and that would make him less the aggrieved party than he seems to think he is. The complaint isn't any more logical than any other one that the blonde genius has ever lodged against him.

A giant sigh; Bo is being terribly, terribly patient with fool cousins that don't know any better. "Do you need to see my lips to figure out how to kiss them?"

Yes, clearly Luke is, after all, the fool here. Because this question he's been asked makes perfect sense. After all, kissing most certainly doesn't require getting so close together that the two parties lose visual contact with each other's lips. Kissing is more like a game of tennis where it's important to keep an eye on the ball.

"No," he answers, eyes rolling to make clear just how pointless this discussion is.

"Then you're supposed to close them when you kiss." According, apparently, to the _Bo Duke Manual of Kissing_. Which he reckons his cousin has accumulated enough experience to have written, but then again he lacks fascination for literary endeavors. Luke can't be blamed for not reading books that don't exist.

Besides, it's Bo's fault, really. All of it. "That's what you get for not turning off the light." Which, if a bed so small could be split in two, is on Bo's side. "If the light ain't on, you don't know if my eyes are open or closed."

Along with being ignorant of the rules, he's also stubborn, and apparently not particularly funny. "Fine, Luke. You want to be that way," and Bo's shoving against the bed, as if it's the one who has insulted him. Must be by association. Luke's an ass, and so is his bed. "That's just fine. You turn off the light any time you want to." He's upright now, taking the three steps to his own bed. Throwing back the sheets and climbing in, because even if it hasn't been slept in since they got back to Hazzard, Bo's bed is friendly territory to Luke's hostile bed.

It would be pretty easy to snap off the light, echo Bo's "fine" and close his eyes against the childish fit that's being pitched. It might even lead to a solid night's sleep to have the full expanse of his mattress to himself. If he were younger, if he didn't know full well the pent up frustration that's been coiling up in his cousin's body for days now, he'd think nothing of turning his back on it all. But, because he reckons that splitting apart in the nights will pretty much leave them with no time together at all, he doesn't.

"Bo," and this right here is some pride-swallowing he's doing. He reckons he's ready to run off and join the circus now; there's no way that swallowing swords could be any less sharp-edged, not to mention distasteful, than this. "Come back here."

And in return for his Herculean efforts, he gets presented with a broad back. White skin there, and they've both been spending too much time indoors. The man needs a tan, but first he needs to stop pretending that he wants to be left alone.

"All right, fine." So much for his little pride-swallowing trick. He's going to have to gulp down the dignity of a grown man. "You can stay there. But the light's going to be on and my eyes will be wide open over here until you come back."

Shrugged shoulders, and Bo doesn't care. Doesn't care so much that it's all of about ten seconds before he cranes his neck to peer at him over the curve of that shoulder. Snorts, and goes back to pretending he's got any chance of sleeping. And Luke has to give him a certain amount of credit. He lasts a full thirty seconds before looking again, then another minute after that.

"Quit it!" his cousin snaps, and instantly they're knee high to grasshoppers all over again.

"I ain't doing nothing to you," is the only reasonable response one snot-nosed little monster can give to another. He waits for the whining to begin, about how Luke is so (complete with elongated o sound) doing something, and reckons that after that Bo will try to tell on him. That part, he expects, should be rather interesting, considering the only one he can tell is just one thin slab of plaster away and doesn't want to hear it.

"Oh yeah?" comes as a surprise to him, followed by Bo rolling over. Sitting up, squint-eyed look, curl at the corner of his lips, but it lacks the resentment of a genuinely annoyed Bo Duke. Up, and one giant, sliding step across the gap between them, and there are hard hands shoving at his shoulders. The move is deficient in both strength and grace, but Luke reckons he can overlook that and let himself be pinned. "What?" Bo says, anticipating a complaint that Luke's got no intentions of making. "I ain't doing nothing to you."

"Not yet you ain't," he agrees. Gets shoved a little harder as a reward for being so accommodating, winds up with a knee between his legs, pulling the sheet tight enough that it might just cut off circulation the lower half of his body. His immobility seems to please the brat that's looming over him. Silly little smile on his face as he lets go of Luke's shoulder long enough to flip the light off.

"Close your eyes, Luke," is all the warning he gets, and then there are lips searching for his, missing a little to the left at first, but he adjusts. They both adjust, shift, and nudge until there are no more entrapments, nothing holding him down, and he stays because there's nowhere else he wants to be.

Kissing, but it has to stay gentle, has to be about love and not sex because, fools that they are, when they rebuilt this place, they did not make the new walls any more soundproof than the old ones.

"Luke," gets whispered somewhere after the kisses have to stop altogether or they'll take on a life of their own. "Why do you keep your eyes open?"

"Because I like watching you." It's only part of the truth, but it's the important part. Besides, he's spent all his life watching Bo, and why should their relatively new discovery of the pleasures of kissing each other make any difference in Luke's habits, really?

Anyway, it might not be the answer Bo wants, but it seems to work out. One more press of lips for that, then a yawn in his face just like the hound dogs they once kept used to do, and all is peaceful.

But that's the nights. The days are harder.

Because there are things that are unsayable, unhearable. About how Jesse Duke's nephews have turned their backs on the way they were raised, the whippings and hours of lectures, church sermons and dreams of grandchildren, to take up with each other. There are no words that make it acceptable, palatable, tolerable in any way. Hell, even Luke hardly dares to do more than whisper about it within his own brain.

Besides, the cousins weren't bred for conversations and debate. Unlike Cooter, they have no interest in politics, other than the politics of staying alive and out of jail. Action is their friend, and without it, they're at sea.

What they really need is a good brawl, the variety of which the Boar's Nest doesn't serve up anymore. In absence of that, he reckons the next best thing he could do would be to get Bo and Daisy trapped in the same space and let them beat the tar out of each other. It wouldn't resolve anything, but somehow it would manage to end in hugs and forgiveness all the same. Or, at the very least, an agreement not to dwell on uncomfortable topics. They're all damn good at ignoring what upsets them, from losing their parents to the end of their moonshining career to years and years of battling the law.

But his cousins insist on moving in concentric circles, not only to each other, but to him as well. Even Bo wants nothing to do with him in the daylight, where Daisy might stumble upon them sharing the same fifteen feet of space and assume they'd just been up to things she doesn't want to think about. Doing endless loops around the house, the land and on a good day, town, but never intersecting.

Okay, so his thought about sending Bo and Daisy to shop for groceries together might not have been his best laid plan ever. Seemed obvious enough at the time that they each had an interest in cooking and the house wasn't nearly well enough stocked to feed three ravenous Dukes. (Plus townsfolk that could be counted on to drop by to experience the novelty of all of the cousins being in one place again, and if they just happened to show up within an hour of mealtime, of course they had to be fed.) A trip together to Rhuebottoms, and he figured Bo and Daisy'd hold it together on the way there, tense little jabs at each other sufficing until they hit town where the public eye would keep them at bay. But somewhere on those dirt roads to home, where there's still plenty of nothing and noplace, where tempers can flame up and singe no one except the two people that they need to, he expected they'd go ahead and have at it. Perfectly reasonable idea, except Bo pleaded masculinity and Daisy independence, and both of their chins had lifted for all the wrong reasons. Not as a challenge to each other, but show Luke that their Duke pride was affronted by his sloppy little plans. _You've got to do better if you want to fool us_, the matching set of crackling blue eyes informed him.

But he's gotten a bit rusty when it comes to plans. Most likely it's Rosco's fault for having mellowed with age. For carrying a stuffed dog, because he's tired of losing the ones he loves, from Flash to Boss Hogg, or maybe because he doesn't know the difference anymore. If the new Commissioner had half the smarts and cunning of his predecessor, Luke would be back at the top of his planning game by now, Bo would be jumping the General over the courthouse, and Daisy… Daisy wouldn't have time to dwell on what her cousins get up to in what little privacy they can find in the house they grew up in.

Could be it's Rosco's fault that he winds up in the kitchen with Daisy. He's not invited, exactly. But she's not going to chase him out with a whisk, either, for getting in her way, tracking up her floors, just plain being male. They'd have to be on a lot better terms for her to treat him that way. And she'd have to be a little less frantic than she currently is, trying to manage a meal for seven when she's out of practice, and quite frankly, in competition with Bo. Cooter and Cletus will be back, bringing Rosco and Lulu in tow, for some more Duke cooking. Female Duke cooking to be specific, and Bo has banished himself from the house in some sort of a pout. Could be Luke should go in search of him (could be he's got a pretty good idea that the man hasn't gone beyond the porch where he can be easily found) but the frizz-haired, taut-lipped, wild-eyed look that he gets when he enters the kitchen stops him.

"I'll cut the potatoes," is the offer he makes, and it doesn't get turned down. Pan fries, one of her specialties, and he knows there is some ratio of thickness to frying time that she uses. He doesn't know the science behind it, but long ago the exact width of slices that she needs got drilled into his head. And he's nothing if not facile with hand tools, even those simple ones like a knife.

He's got himself a tidy pile of raw potatoes in no time, and has the foolish audacity to ask what else he can do to help. He gets glowered at, asked if he doesn't have someplace else to be, and when he stands up to her inappropriate anger, Daisy's better nature asserts itself.

"I'm sorry, sugar," she sighs. "I just ain't thinking straight." It's an interesting admission. As far as he knows, neither of his younger cousins has ever taken the time to straighten out the wild spirals that their minds seem to run in. Thinking straight has never been anything they valued or worried about; Luke used to do all the straight thinking in the family. "You can stir the sauce there," because where Bo made fried chicken, Daisy's got to get creative and make cacciatore. The word stumbles across Duke tongues, leaving nicks and dings and never quite coming out the same way twice, but the tart flavor heals those injuries right back up.

He's letting his spoon make a lazy, red whirlpool in the sauce pan when there's a searing pain in the skin just above his left elbow. There's no thought, just the movement of his body away from what hurts it, and a hollered, "Dang it, Daisy!" that he doesn't really mean. Over to the sink and running cold water, and she's there at his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Luke," is nervous, twitching by his side, hands fluttering close to him, but not touching. "Let me see."

"I'm all right, Daisy," isn't said any more pleasantly than the way he yelled at her seconds ago, it's just an attempt to get himself left alone. Doesn't work.

"You ain't okay, you're hurt." It wants to be commanding, like the girl she used to be. The tomboy, the bully, the one who could make her big, tough cousins stop in their tracks and start yammering apologies for crimes they had apparently committed, but didn't even understand. Her voice strives to convey these things, but it wobbles, stumbles, falls over itself, clogged with tears. "Let me see," she begs again.

He could show it to her or he could shove her away. Both options have their merits, but he does neither. The cold water, though it was just starting to take the edge off the sting, gets abandoned, as he turns and slides his arms around her. Gives in though he has no real desire to, and lets her cry on his shoulder.

Before her tears manage to get up a real head of steam, Bo's slamming through the door, in search of the cause of the hollering, no doubt. Nothing but screen between the kitchen and the porch, and he likely heard a little something about Luke being hurt, too. Funny sort of a protective stance he's taking, face pink, shoulders back, chin up, and he's finally ready for that fight Luke's been nudging him toward. But this is not the time.

His right hand comes off of Daisy's back, palm out towards Bo. _Drop your weapons_, it says. _This here girl's unarmed._

It's a struggle for the man to balance his newfound protectiveness for Luke with his age-old inability to tolerate a woman's tears. It's tempting, really, to spin Daisy around and deposit her into her youngest cousin's arms. It's a more natural fit than their current positions, but he doesn't. He just turns his outstretched hand sideways, opens his arm, and invites Bo in. A three-way hug, with too many arms and not enough air for all of them to breathe. Manages to stay together despite all the natural forces that ought to pull it apart: the food still bubbling on the stove, the imminent arrival of their friends and neighbors, the fact that he loves his cousins in two treacherously different ways. But a kiss to Daisy's temple, than another to Bo's cheek, and no one seems to die of it.

And when his tolerance for closeness has just about run out, when the still-running water begins to grate on his ears and the burn on his arm has nagged at him long enough, he steps back. Lets his cousins fill the gap he's left behind, turns his arm over to show Bo that while there's a clear red streak of damage forming there, he will certainly live through it, and goes back to the sink. He takes care of himself while his cousins look after each other.

Eventually, as it always does, the affection between Bo and Daisy loses its energy. There's a swat of skinny little hand against the broad chest, a chastisement about how her baby cousin is keeping her from creating a masterpiece, and Daisy goes back to the safety of her pots and pans. Meanwhile Bo slides away, and Luke figures it's for the best, what with too many cooks spoiling the pot and all. But he's back in seconds with a clean washcloth, and a firm grip. Luke gets pulled from the sink, his arm dried off, and before he knows what's happening, he's sitting at the table while Bo slathers butter over the angry red splotch above his elbow.

— — — —

Rib crushing hugs and "You boys look after each other, now." Luke reckons they ought to be grateful for what they get, considering how the week started and then the way the majority of it played out. It's not just acceptable to get friendly words, it's dang good, really.

But Bo Duke, well, he's never been known to settle for good. He's got to be number one, or die in a fiery crash, trying. And if he happens to take his unsuspecting cousin Luke along for the white-knuckled ride, well, that's just the way it's always been.

Daisy's on her bike, clutch lever pressed, and foot finding neutral. Going to what she thinks of as home these days, to teach a summer school course on ferns and fernlike greenery. Smiling through the face shield of her helmet, and Bo doesn't have the smarts it takes just to wave and smile back. No—

"Daisy," he has to interject at the last possible second. "Your bed. You ain't using it. Mostly anyway, only when you come to visit and that ain't often. Can me and Luke use it? Ours are too small," comes spilling out fast and reckless, like a waterfall swollen with spring rains. Or a man blurting out words that he's afraid might just get him run over by one helluva powerful bike.

But she just laughs at greedy little blonde boys who ask too much. "I don't much reckon it's any of my business what you boys do in your room when the door is closed," she says, and it's not quite a blessing, but it's dang close. The shield gets shoved up so her eyes can catch each of theirs, locking down for seconds at a time. "But don't you dare go doing none of it in my room. And don't you go moving my bed neither, not even the mattress. You just leave it right where it's always been." And if that's an inaccurate statement, what with how it got moved upstairs only a few years back when the house got rebuilt, the belated fear of her wrath keeps Bo from mentioning that. "Besides, y'all can just run on up the Capitol City and get yourselves a king size, if you want." She kisses her gloved hand, and blows what she's deposited there in their general direction before snapping her shield back into place, revving up her motorcycle and pulling a dirt-throwing one-eighty out of the farmyard. She might or might not wave at them; it's too hard to say with how they're coughing and trying to clear the dust from in front of their faces.

"You reckon," Bo asks him when breathing becomes possible again. "We can get up to Capitol City before the furniture store closes?"

"Since when are you in such an all-fired rush to go shopping?" That gets him a chin-tipped, squint-eyed look. On that asks exactly who he thinks he's fooling. So he tosses the keys to his Jeep at his cousin – its flat roof will better bear the extra-wide mattress Bo's likely to want to invest in, and says, "If you drive, we will."

Gets a silly grin and, "Last one to buckle their seatbelt has to do the other one's chores for a week," followed by a lopsided lope toward the Jeep. No problem, Luke's got him licked, and even if he didn't, there aren't really a ton of chores to be done these days anyway.


	75. Cranky

Cranky

"Luke!" The near-blinding brightness of glare through front windows mocks his complaint. Yellow, even the dust particles aloft reflect those warm tones and on an already hot morning like this he doesn't need the walls to mimic the sun at him. Yellow, and what in hell were they thinking when it came to the changes they made to this house? Dirty white never awakened him so rudely as the obscene flashiness of their remodeled walls. They can't exactly unbuild the addition, but damn it all, first chance they get, he and Luke are repainting the place. Or maybe just stripping off what's where as letting the dull plaster show through.

Of course, he's going to have to find Luke first. And since seeing is out of the question, he follows his nose. Coffee, kitchen, cousin. He should have known, or maybe he always did know. Maybe he just used the excuse of not knowing where to find the man to let his hot blood boil that much more violently.

"Luke!" he doesn't need to yell, the man's right there. Doesn't need to yell, and shouldn't be yelling in Uncle Jesse's house but, "Damn it! You need to stop sneaking off in the morning."

The way he has to squint against the glare of sunlight reflecting off of every shiny surface (and it would be silly to get rid of the toaster oven in deference to a past when they didn't have one, especially since Luke seems to like it so much, even if its glass front has just about got him momentarily blinded) already makes its point about how it's more a matter of him sleeping in than Luke getting up early. He doesn't need that raised eyebrow of Luke's as well, making its own silent comment about his sleeping habits.

And besides, he's the one that's been doing the lion's share of making sure they get their money's worth out of the bed they bought. Not that it's the top of the line or anything, but it's solid. Oak, because Luke reckoned the house wanted it. Something about it matching the floors and being the kind of bed that their ancestors would approve of (even if its occupants might just have them spinning in their graves) but it was back-breakingly heavy to haul up the stairs, and the way he sees it he's earned the right to stay in it as long as he wants. His main complaint is that he can't seem to keep Luke in the bed for reasonable amounts of time.

It wasn't that he felt the cold absence of the body next to his; it's plenty warm already even if it _is _still too dang early to be up. The curl of Luke's hair plastered darkly to his temple (and Bo knows that beard's got to be less than fun to have in the heat of summer, but the man has kept it anyway), and the stains forming down the back of that blue shirt attest to that. It was more the sense that the bed was too big, too soft. He's come to prefer sprawling some part of himself or other over the unforgiving muscle and bone of his lover to letting all of his weight sink into the gushiness of mattress. And although what prompted them to buy this bed was the crowding of Luke's twin, he finds it's possible to drown in empty sheets and blankets, and to find the swim to the edge of the mattress to be too long and arduous for his sleep-logged muscles.

"Have some cheese toast," is how Luke dismisses what he most likely reckons is nothing more than a temper tantrum anyway. Tries to hand his plate over to where Bo's standing, but it's not going to work. He doesn't much care for melted cheese to begin with, and Luke knows it. Just like he ought to know better than to keep sliding away so early in the mornings. Nope, those hands Bo's placed on his hips are not coming off, so Luke's going to have to keep on holding that plate, stalled in mid-air with cooling, congealed cheese on lukewarm bread.

"Suit yourself," the man says, putting down the plate. "I suppose you ain't interested in coffee, neither?"

Oh, the eldest of the Dukes just loves to show off his genius, and how he figures stuff out all by himself like that. How Bo doesn't want breakfast (yet) or coffee. So smart, but he's incapable of learning any new tricks, like how all Bo _does_ want is for him to relax for a change, stay close, to wake up by degrees to little touches and stokes, to open his eyes only as far as slits instead of letting them pop wide to hurtle him forward into the day.

Be reckons that if he stands here long enough, maybe taps his bare toes on the linoleum beneath them, Luke will get around to asking him what he wants, and maybe, just maybe, he'll actually listen to the answer for once.

"We got a letter from Daisy." Yeah, he knows that. It came with yesterday's mail, and he reckons that some fine day he might make his way to reading it. Or not. Eventually, when the sun is properly up and after they've gone out to see how the seed corn is taking, he's pretty sure Luke'll read it to him, or at least share the important details. Not now, not when Bo's going to be forced to light into him in order to get his attention. "She says it's hot out there, too." In Los Angeles, where she has gone to visit Enos in the intervening weeks between the end of her summer semester and the beginning of fall. Could be she went west because her other choice was coming to Hazzard and spending time in close proximity to her sinning cousins, but then again—"She also says we might want to start steeling ourselves to tell Enos about us. She's going to try to bring him home."

"Good for her," he growls. Doesn't really mean to, shouldn't come out sarcastic like that. He's really proud of Daisy for taking a chance. Seems like Dukes are late bloomers, prone to making mistake after mistake before they manage to admit to what they've known all along. About love and soul-mates right under their noses, taken for granted until they're gone. Years of lost emptiness, filled with silly side dreams like NASCAR and smoke jumping, failed marriages and doctoral degrees. But eventually they learn their lessons, and he reckons Enos won't present half the challenge to their cousin that Luke did to him. The two of them probably ought to figure out how to break things to him.

Enos, at least, will probably be too well-mannered (or maybe too jumpy) to laugh at them like Cooter did. So damn funny that the supposedly solemn former Senator fell off his chair onto the grease-stained concrete floor of the garage that was his one-time livelihood, second home, and sometime junkyard all in one. Giggled like a little girl, gasping for breath while two Dukes glowered at him from above. "Oh, you were serious?" he'd finally asked, and then they'd had to tell him all over again. The next hour or so wasn't a ton of fun, reminiscent of days spent in the boys' locker room at school explaining things to the uninitiated, complete with hand gestures. In the end they'd had to take Cooter out and get him drunk, or maybe it was the other way around. When it came right down to it, it didn't much matter, not when they came stumbling out of the Boar's Nest too far gone to drive, and ended up spending the night in the cramped loft of the garage. Cooter claimed not to mind how the Duke boys wound up spreading one dusty old sleeping bag on the floor, and how Bo's head rested on Luke's shoulder in absence of a pillow.

"Somebody's cranky," is how Luke brings him back to the here and now, away from the relatively pleasant memory of cuddling close, even if his head had rung like a church bell at noon when he woke up the next day. Leaning back in his chair now, casual. Smirking, and he looks dang happy for someone who's been getting glared at for the last several minutes.

Seems Luke's misinformed. "I ain't cranky, Luke." Justifiably annoyed, maybe sleep deprived. That's not the same thing as cranky. Someone needs to set his cousin straight.

"Cranky," Luke repeats, nodding solemnly at his pronouncement. Lazily pulling himself up to a stand. "Someone needs a nap," is his next brilliant observation.

"I don't need no nap," is just as plain as the nose on Luke's face. Which is pretty plain, but those eyes above it, glowing with mischief in the morning sun – well, it's weird to think this way when he's looked into them his whole life, but they're just the prettiest things Bo has ever seen. "I just got out of bed. All I'm asking is that you don't go running off alone, first thing in the morning. Wait for me or wake me up, I don't care," in theory, anyway. He's not entirely sure how gracefully he'll take it when Luke's shoving at him at hours when only owls – and moonshiners – would be awake. But he'll cross that bridge if ever the man lets him come to it.

"You gonna make me carry you upstairs and put you down for a nap?" Luke's cocked eyebrow thinks he's funny.

"I'd like to see you try." But the thing is, Bo's funnier. Always has been, and it might just be time for his smug cousin to admit it.

Which, of course, is not about to happen. Not under pain of death, or even under pain of pulled muscles – Luke turns around and offers his back for Bo to climb on, piggyback.

"It would work better if you was naked." And also if Bo was, though he's a hell of a lot closer to it than Luke, in nothing more than a thin t-shirt and an old pair of gym shorts.

His cleverness gets the offer rescinded, prompts some shoving instead. Seems to him that he can fight against the momentum and wind up wrestling right here on the kitchen floor. Or he can go with the flow and end up back in bed. With Luke, and if it's not exactly the point he intended to make, it's a point that's got merits all its own. Oh sure, they need to get out to see how the corn's tending to the dry heat, and they need to do it this morning, because the afternoon will be lost to the delivery of the goats they bought from old Silas. But it's early yet, and there's still plenty of scorching hot day to come. So he lets himself be propelled toward the stairs, then takes them two at a time. Luke on his heels and he gets goosed. Such a stupid gesture, deserves the high pitched giggle that it elicits. Into their bedroom they sprint, no need to close the door, and he's being shoved down onto the bed. He reckons Luke needs to be wearing a lot fewer clothes, but before he can get around to doing anything about that, there's a body leaning over his. Entrancingly blue eyes close, if only for a second, and there's a kiss, brighter than the sunshine and warmer than the day. Bo reckons that if he could freeze time right about here, life would be perfect.

_Finis_


End file.
